The Ultimate Takedown of Obama’s ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Speech

President Obama’s instantly infamous “You didn’t build that” speech is a major turning point of the 2012 election not because it was a gaffe but because it was an accurate and concise summary of core progressive fiscal dogma. It was also a political blunder of epic proportions because in his speech Obama unintentionally proved the conservatives’ case for limited government.

This essay will show you how.

When Obama implied at the Roanoke, Virginia rally that some businessmen refuse to pay for public works from which they benefit, he presented a thesis which, like a three-legged stool, relies on three assumptions that must all be true for the argument to remain standing:

1. That the public programs he mentioned in his speech constitute a significant portion of the federal budget;
2. That business owners don’t already pay far more than their fair share of these expenses; and
3. That these specific public benefits are a federal issue, rather than a local issue.

If any of these legs fails, then the whole argument collapses.

For good measure, we won’t just kick out one, we’ll kick out all three.

“Small Government” Is Not the Same as “No Government”

Progressives critique the fiscal conservative/Tea Party/libertarian position by purposely misrepresenting it as anarchy. When fiscal conservatives say “We want smaller government,” progressives reply, “Oh, so you want no government?”

“Government” in this particular discussion is shorthand for “communal pooling of resources for mutual benefit.”

Fiscal conservatives have never called for no government — that’s the anarchist position, and contemporary anarchism is actually dominated by extreme leftists, not extreme conservatives. Instead, fiscal conservatives clearly and consistently call for limited government, or for smaller government — but not for the absence of government altogether.

So when President Obama and his mentor Elizabeth Warren justify their call for tax hikes by pointing out that all entrepreneurs benefit from communal infrastructure, they’re committing the classic Straw Man Fallacy by arguing against anarchy — a position that their opponents do not hold.

Here’s the shocking truth: President Obama and Elizabeth Warren are correct — we all benefit from certain taxpayer-funded collectivist government infrastructure projects and programs. And here’s the other shocking truth: Therefore, we should limit government expenditures to just those programs. Why? Because most of the other government programs either

• hinder, constrict or penalize entrepreneurial activity; or
• benefit some people to the detriment of others; or
• waste money on bureaucracy, overhead or ill-considered expenditures that end up indebting the nation and by extension all Americans.

Below are videos and transcripts of Obama’s speech as well as the Elizabeth Warren speech that inspired it. First watch or read both speeches, and then we’ll list all of the programs that they both mention, and see what percentage of our taxes goes toward those programs.

Obama’s Speech

Here is Obama’s game-changing speech from Friday, July 13 in Roanoke, Virginia:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

Warren’s Speech

And here’s Elizabeth Warren’s original 2011 speech, upon which Obama’s was based:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you!

But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea — God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

OK, now that we have both speeches in front of us, let us list the exact government programs and projects that Obama and Warren use to justify their position:

• Education(Obama: “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.” Warren: “You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.”)
• Transportation(Obama: “Somebody invested in roads and bridges.” Warren: “You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.”)
• Public Safety(Warren: “You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” Obama: “There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own.”)
• The Internet(Obama: “Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”)

…and that’s it.

OK. Fine. Let’s absolutely concede this point to Obama and Warren: There are some government activities that benefit us all, including business owners.

And for the sake of argument let’s just allow for a moment that the federal government is the best, most efficient and only supplier of these benefits. You win, Elizabeth and Barack.

But having conceded this central point, let us now ask the key follow-up question, which is the first leg of their three-point hypothesis: What percentage of the federal budget is devoted to these universally beneficial public works?

And if you’re a progressive reading this, you’d better get off the stool because it’s about to fall down.

What percentage of this is devoted to education, transportation, public safety, and creating the Internet (i.e. basic research)?

I’m going to be as generous as possible to the progressive position and include ALL of defense spending in their column, since defense aids both basic research and public safety. Highways and roads are covered by the Department of Transportation. The Department of Education covers, well, education. And various other smaller departments — Department of Justice, National Science Foundation, etc. — contribute in varying degrees to public safety, research, and so forth.

Ready? Here we go:

Below is a list of all government expenditures, with Obama’s and Warren’s “public benefit” programs highlighted:

And that, of course, is being absurdly generous to the Obama position, since in reality huge portions of the defense budget, the Department of Education budget, and so on, have basically nothing to do with promoting public safety or educating workers. And let’s be even more generous and round that 23.4% up to 25%, or one-fourth of the budget.

So what Obama and Warren are really stating is this:

Only one-fourth of your federal tax dollars go to projects and programs that benefit the general public and entrepreneurs; the other three-fourths are essentially a complete waste, or are at best optional.

Which of course is exactly what fiscal conservatives have been arguing all along.

So yeah, I agree with Obama: Let’s slash the federal budget by 75%, and only fund services and programs that directly serve the public good.

The first leg of their argument has snapped, and the stool has toppled over. Since the essential programs aiding “the commons” are only a small percentage of an overall bloated budget, we don’t need to raise taxes to fund them.

And now for the second leg.

The Wealthy Already Pay Far More Than Their “Fair Share”

Are you ready for the happy news? If we stick to Obama and Warren’s “essentials only” budget, we can eliminate all taxes for 99% of Americans, and even lower taxes for the top 1%, and still have enough to pay for defense, transportation, public safety, education and all the rest. How? Because the top 1% of all taxpayers — the wealthy elite businesspeople who benefit from roads and schools and firefighters — pay about 37% of all federal taxes, far more than enough to cover the essentials, plus interest on the debt and plenty of extras besides.

Clonk. That’s the second leg hitting the floor.

Kicking Out the Third Leg: Education, Public Safety and Roads Are Covered by Local Taxes, Not Federal Taxes

The final component in Obama’s thesis is far and away the weakest, but for some reason few pundits have noted it. Obama and Warren have intentionally conflated local taxes with federal taxes. In most localities across the country, public education, police and firefighters, and street repair are primarily paid for by property taxes, local sales taxes, and state taxes. Federal grants can supplement local funds, but rarely is a school district or a police department propped up entirely with federal money.

So if we revisit Obama’s and Warren’s speeches, they’re actually making an argument for increased local taxes. And yet they and their audiences somehow imagine that the arguments given are a legitimate rationale for increased federal taxes.

As I said at the beginning of this essay, Obama has just unintentionally proved the conservatives’ case for limited government, and for decentralization and local control.

The stool is now in pieces on the floor. But I just can’t stop kicking.

Obama’s Fallacy that the Goal of Government Research Is to Benefit the Private Sector

“The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

Now, everybody agrees that a great number of scientific and engineering breakthroughs have happened as a result of “government research,” primarily military research: not just the Internet but nuclear power, GPS systems, jet aircraft, and many more. But Obama is sorely mistaken in claiming that the Internet was created “so that all the companies could make money” off it. Actually, the Internet was created to facilitate defense-related research as well as to strengthen military command-and-control capabilities. It was most definitely not created “so that all the companies could make money,” as a very early ARPANet handbook explained:

It is considered illegal to use the ARPANet for anything which is not in direct support of Government business….Sending electronic mail over the ARPANet for commercial profit or political purposes is both anti-social and illegal.

Ooops.

In this instance as well as almost every other instance, government-funded engineering or scientific breakthroughs were originally and exclusively for military purposes; it was only much later that entrepreneurs came along and found a profit-generating and society-benefitting civilian use for military hardware.

Similar contravening facts undermine other aspects of Obama’s and Warren’s emotional arguments. Take transportation, for example. Prior to 1956, the vast majority of roads and highways and rail lines in the United States were built either privately, by local communities, or by states. It was not until the arrival of the Interstate Highway System in 1956 that the federal government became deeply involved in building roads — and even then, as with the Internet and most other massive federal projects, it was originally for defense, not for commerce.

But the highway system is by now already in place. And the cost of maintaining it and building whatever new highways are needed is a tiny fraction of our federal budget, far less than even 1%. And the business owners who benefit from roads are already paying more than enough taxes to cover their cost.

Rebuttal?

Progressives have been so intoxicated first with Warren’s speech and now with Obama’s that I’m not so sure they’re even aware that anyone has presented a criticism; progressives probably think that conservatives just avoid this whole topic because the entire arc of Warren’s and Obama’s line of reasoning is so convincing and devastating that it’s best to change the subject. But I predict that the pushback against this speech will grow so large that eventually word of it will reach the far left, and when that happens they may come back with the following retort:

Warren and Obama were just presenting a few examples, not a comprehensive list of public benefits from taxation. These were just off-the-cuff speeches, not policy papers. There are many other federal programs from which business owners benefit and toward which they should therefore contribute.

If so: Let’s see that list. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.

Did businesses benefit when in cities across the country HUD built massive housing projects which instantly turned into pre-fab ghettos?

Do businesses benefit when the EPA awards itself unilateral power to impose its interpretation of environmental laws, with no hearings and no warning?

Will businesses benefit when they are forced to abide by byzantine, onerous and expensive Obamacare regulations?

The progressive stance might be: “But we all benefit when everyone is healthy, when global warming is stopped, when children have high self-esteem, when no American goes hungry!”

But by this stage we’ve already passed from measurable physical benefits like roads to fire-fighting to vague claims about intangible potential benefits for which there is no proof. Obama said, “Somebody invested in roads and bridges” because the audience could understand a concrete example; he didn’t get up and say “Somebody invested in high self-esteem” because it would expose the slippery slope underneath this line of reasoning.

Should businesses pay enough taxes to support the nation’s basic physical infrastructure? Yes. Of course. And they already do. But should they pay taxes to fund every progressive social fantasy? That’s open for debate, and that’s not the point Obama and Warren were making. Overtly, at least.

We should thank President Obama for finally revealing the central justification for his economic policy. Now that we see what’s at the heart of his fiscal philosophy, we can demonstrate that he has only ended up proving the opposite of what he intended.

Others Debunking Obama’s Speech

This wouldn’t count as a comprehensive takedown if I didn’t note and link to some of the other pointed critiques of Obama’s speech. Here are some of the best, many of which cover points I didn’t even mention here:

- LauraW at Ace of Spades HQ“[Warren and Obama] completely discount risk (and hard work). Risk is nearly the whole game. The whole thing, this entire American enterprise, rests on people who are willing to take a risk.”

- Paul Ryan“As all of his big government spending programs fail to restore jobs and growth, he seems to be retreating into a statist vision of government direction and control of a free society that looks backward to the failed ideologies of the 20th century.”

- Rick Moran at PJM’s The Tatler“The notion that it takes a village to build a business ignores the idea of a voluntary community and smacks of forced altruism. To Obama, we are all cogs in a machine with individual rights and achievements taking a back seat to a collective sense of worth imposed by a soulless government.”

Charles Krauthammer“And it’s completely a straw man argument as if conservatives and Republicans are arguing to disband the fire department and the police department so we could all individually do it on our own. The idea that infrastructure is necessary and good is as old as the republic. It’s older than that. The Romans had the Via Appia, and that wasn’t exactly a new idea.”

- Mitt Romney“The governor notes that the money that created those roads and bridges came out of the pockets that Obama is now looking to pick in the name of fairness.”

- Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club“The key ideas are familiar. Spread the wealth. Tax people so that they may “give something back.” Limit incomes at the top to maintain fairness….If no business can exist in a vacuum, neither can any politician’s talking points. It is perfectly understandable that Barack Obama’s economic and political philosophy are not entirely of his own making. Most of it is derivative.”

Tom Blumer“I challenge anyone to find more than a small handful of highly successful businesspersons who have actually said the equivalent of ‘I got there on my own’ in first-person singular….Obama and Warren aren’t mad because successful people are out there saying ‘I did it on my own’ — because they’re not. They’re mad because these successful people aren’t saying ‘I did it because the government helped me.’”

Abraham Lincoln“The[se] are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden.”

Bookworm Room“Obama has declared the un-Constitution, one that holds that all men are created dependent, with their only inalienable right being their continued obligation to support the governing system into which they are born. This is the antithesis of what our Founders sought to create, and it runs counter to the contract between government and people that we know as the Constitution.”

271 Comments, 128 Threads

1.
Danny Alexander

Outstanding stuff, Zombie.

Further to Obama’s allusion to the Internet: As you rightly point out, at least one major aim of ARPAnet was a secure communications infrastructure in the event of a nuclear conflict with the USSR. So yes, I suppose that this represents an instance of government-led activity yielding broader benefits in the longer term — but it also represents the “doing things better together” of US national self-defense against totalitarian collectivism. Steeped in the crypto-communism views of his extended family circle and in the West-flagellating hypocrisy of the unilateralist nuclear-freeze movement, Obama could never bring himself to acknowledge that “there are some *warlike* things we do better together” — things that frequently and irrefutably yield great downstream benefits in the non-defense commercial economic development of our country, particularly when tweaked by risk-taking individuals.

Common ARPANET lore posits that the computer network was designed to survive a nuclear attack. In A Brief History of the Internet, the Internet Society describes the coalescing of the technical ideas that produced the ARPANET:

It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started, claiming that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war. This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks.

So it looks like, although later development of the early Internet did focus on survivability, the apparent first motivation for ARPANet was to connect computers doing government/military research.

Not sure how much of this claim is true, but it’s interesting that the original “survive a nuclear war” aspect may have been overstated over the years.

So it looks like, although later development of the early Internet did focus on survivability, the apparent first motivation for ARPANet was to connect computers doing government/military research.

Not sure how much of this claim is true, but it’s interesting that the original “survive a nuclear war” aspect may have been overstated over the years.

–
One of my friends is a career soldier and has been since the 80s. I remember him mentioning that in the First Gulf War, the Iraqi army’s communications survived considerably longer than expected because it was taking advantage of TCP/IP, one of the key protocols used to make the Internet (and ARPANet) work. Essentially, whenever a part of the communications network was bombed by Coalition forces, TCP/IP simply routed the message through other points. This is all more technical than can easily be explained to a non-technical audience so I’m not sure how to prove that to you; a simple link isn’t going to do it.

Also, further to the implication that government invented the Internet, probably the single piece that is most useful to business is the World Wide Web which was indeed invented by a government employee: British researcher (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee, who was working for CERN at the time. (CERN is the place on the Swiss/French border that found the Higgs Boson particle – also known as The God Particle – recently. So the part of the internet most used by business and ordinary people like us WAS invented by a government: specifically a BRITISH scientist working for a EUROPEAN government organization. The American government had little to do with that, although they certainly had quite a lot to do with ARPANet, whose infrastructure was, I think, essentially to what Berners-Lee did later. Here’s a link to bio on Berners-Lee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

Don’t forget that there was a long string of continuous development here. ARPAnet was succeeded by DARPAnet, and given that one of the functions of military computer networks, perhaps not ARPAnet but related special-purpose networks, was to connect the various components of the NORAD air defense systems, hardening was definitely in mind.http://www.inetdaemon.com/tutorials/internet/history.shtml
“Paul Baran of Rand corporation first conceived the idea for a distributed, packet switching network, built on the premise that communication on the network would be unreliable. (See Paul Baran’s “On Distributed Communications” series at RAND’s website). The network was designed to be able to operate after a nuclear attack had wiped out large portions of the network.”

As the article mentions packet switching is more robust.
In telephony the majority of phones were connected by ‘circuit switched’ lines. One phone line connected all the way through to the other end.
Once Sonet came along things started changing and then cellular sped up the process. Today we are converting to packet switched telephony as well.
The bandwidth of cell phones is now faster than the T-1 circuits (1.544MBs)that used to connect whole cell sites to the network.

The point is that technology changes due to market pressure and not government pressure.
“Politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason.”

The logical fallacy in this “government needed to do it” argument is that it implies that it wouldn’t have otherwise happened. There was Bell Labs research into packet routing (which lead to the TCP/IP standard (not technology)) which would have eventually brought Ma Bell (back when there was such a thing) into this. The government may have accelerated the schedule, but they didn’t create the technology.

It’s beyond ludicrous to think that had the DoD not pursued these things for their own reasons that we’d still be using dial telebhones and mainframes today, and yet that’s exactly what the Obama/Warren crowd are implying.

Ma Bell was that ‘Too Big to Fail’ tech company that brought us phones that would last 30 years, work when the power was out, and was probably in the works in their lab when THE GOVERNMENT came in and diced them up into nice small pieces that each went thru leveraged buyout after buyout so Mountain Bell became xxx, who became yyy, whou became Qwest, who became Centurylink. It proved that our hate for Ma Bell was misplaced, they had far better service than Qwest ever did.

What is sad is Ma Bell was organized, when the Won wants to take ove 1/7 of the economy, he creates some 180 different commitees with a flow chart that takes 7 intermediaries between the “Doctor’ and the ‘Subject’ (oops ‘Patient’). Oh Yes, Obama thinks the businesses should pay everything to this health care program because he made the Air.

Yes us Tea Party types want that horribly small government like what was in 2005 (around 19% of GDP) when the D’s were complaining so much of the huge deficits of $300B, I only hear crickets from the D’s on the debt now.

This looks pretty close to the 20-25% of the national budget Zombie pointed out that represents what is needed to “serve the public good.”

So… is there a way that we can define taxation simply by a rational correlation of a “Cost of Goods Sold” as a percentage of “services needed and provided” instead our current way of “creating a demand for services” and funding that demand with “tax bills” generated in Congress?

A way that would minimize the “dance for power” by elected politicians and entrenched burocrats?

You’re right about too big to fail, but while the Ma Bell company was doing its great work 30 years ago, they were charging more than we pay today for basic business service, and 25 times more than what we pay for long distance service. Ma Bell great service? yes; Ma Bell high prices? OH YES and then some! But while they were gouging me, one little consumer, Ma Bell knew how to undercut MCI and run it out of business as, a little upstart running long distance data lines from St. Louis to Chicago.
Here’s one tea party loon that will take 180 Qwests or CenturyLinks over the original Ma Bell any day. One of the ways small government works is to keep big business from becoming too big to fail by breaking it up.

There’s another issue here which people tend to forget. Networks developed by Bell and other companies for their own internal use are almost always proprietary in nature. That means that ONLY Bell controls their use, ONLY Bell or licensed companies make interface equipment, and ONLY Bell can expand them for additional traffic.

ARPAnet and DARPAnet are important not only because of their ruggedness and expandability, but because they are open source. The protocols are open standards, any company can build equipment for them, anybody can use them. There were certainly other networks available even during the 70′s, including those from IBM, DEC, and HP. But since they were proprietary, they were not available for use in a public network used primarily by universities (and who could own equipment from just about any vendor).

In general, except for certain military applications, public law requires technology developed by the government to be made available for use by U.S. companies for a nominal fee. Indeed, this is NASA’s real raison d’etre: to develop high-risk aerospace technologies for the U.S. aerospace industry. Boeing spend $11 billion developing the 777, a plane which was an incremental improvement over previous jetliners and for which they already had sales orders. But even Boeing needed cost-sharing with NASA and the Air Force to develop and build the X-48 (http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/improvingflight/x48b.html&gt;. It may be the foundation for the next generation of jetliner, but is still too risky for Boeing to go it alone.

Another example is the V-22 Osprey. Bell and NASA developed tiltrotor technology in the 60′s and 70′s with the X-22 and XV-15 demonstrators; but only after the military paid for the development and initial production of the Osprey is Bell and Boeing considering building commercial versions.

If you wanted to make the case that government seeded technology, a better example would be the first electronic computer, the US Navy’s ENIAC. That actually did get computers up and over a technological/economic hump that would probably have been very difficult for the private sector to do alone. But then again, Bell Labs was doing a lot of this same kind of technology. We’ll never know how long the mainframe would have taken without ENIAC as a demonstrator project, but one thing I can say for sure: without Bell Labs inventing the monolithic transistor in 1948, they wouldn’t have gotten very far.

I would respectfully contend that SEAC rather than ENIAC got things “over the hump” in the computing field. Of course, I have a high degree of partiality and interest in asserting this, as my grandfather (Samuel Nathan Alexander) was the chief of IT at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST — a part of the Commerce Dept.) and ran the project to develop SEAC (for “Standards Eastern Automated Computer”). This machine (i.e., SEAC) went live in Spring 1950.

The ENIAC guys, Eckert & Mauchly, were under contract to my grandfather to build UNIVAC for use in the 1950 Census — ENIAC can be seen, in this perspective, as having been more of a POC/Proof-of-Concept that preceded the UNIVAC project than anything truly “usable” with clearly traceable knock-on/commercial-spinoff effects.

Problem was that Eckert & Mauchly were not going to be able to deliver UNIVAC in time for the 1950 Census as forecast/promised. So my grandfather and his team at NBS built SEAC as the stopgap that saved the day. (The original mandate for SEAC was as a UNIVAC simulator to train Census/Commerce personnel ahead of the actual UNIVAC system’s deployment; with the project delays on UNIVAC proper, SEAC was re-purposed as the actual go-to “production” machine.)

An example of downstream benefits (proof, if you will, that SEAC was the machine that got the computing age “over the hump”)? One the key members of my grandfather’s NBS team, Russell Kirsch, was able to experiment as never before with truly spinoff-able (sorry for the neologism…) prototypes in display and transmission-print (sort of early fax) technologies. Kirsch is thus acknowledged as one of the creators if not the creator of the pixel.

SEAC proved sufficiently successful that my grandfather and his NBS team subsequently developed a follow-on machine dubbed DYSEAC. They then hooked it up with SEAC to demonstrate the possibilities of computer-to-computer communication. Imagine!

The mismanagement contributing to the delayed deployment of the first UNIVAC machine ended up sinking the independence of the UNIVAC company Eckert & Mauchly had launched — but not before SEAC and DYSEAC capabilities had ultimately been rolled up into the UNIVAC machine that took over as the production core for Commerce. So all of this got further rolled up and into the successor machines developed and deployed by UNIVAC’s private-sector acquirer(s).

You’re an important federal bureaucratic regulator sitting in an air-conditioned office in Washington DC conferencing on the phone to the Federal Reserve Bankers in New York, the Mint in San Francisco, the commodities market in Chicago. Fine. You’re doing a hecka job. Regulate away. But understand something, that thing you’re regulating, that office you’re in, those devices you use, that whole system — you didn’t build that. The government didn’t build any of that. That phone — Alexander Graham Bell didn’t build the phone for the sake of the government. The Seattle lumberjacks who cut the phone poles and the Wichita linemen who strung the wires and Ernestine the operator at the switchboard never took on their jobs because of the government.

You got lights on in that office? Tom Edison didn’t build the bulb nor Nikola Tesla the distribution grid because of government and certainly not for you. A modern computer? You didn’t build that. William Shockley worked for Bell Labs to invent the transistor; Jack Kilby invented Integrated circuit boards at Texas Instruments; Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, and Larry Ellison weren’t working for the government and civil service pay rates when they invented the Apple, Basic, and CP/M Willis Carrier invented your air conditioning without the express invitation of the government. Your printer/copier/fax machine — you didn’t build that. Chester Carlson didn’t invent the whole xerographic plain paper imaging industry for the convenience of the government. In fact, the US Navy, seeing his WWII era prototypes, flatly refused to fund or invest in his project. Got an LCD monitor? Lucky you. (Most government air-traffic-control systems were still using old cathode ray tubes last time I checked…) But you didn’t build that. A color LCD display is founded on inventions George Heilheimer developed at RCA. Still jotting your thoughts on post-it notes, with a ballpoint pen? Government didn’t build you that. Oh wait a minute – how do you accomplish your most vital function? What do you do when your desperately need a government cover-up – a white wash? Thank goodness Bette Nesmith, in her Dallas kitchen, invented Liquid Paper. Because sure as heck the government never invented THAT. And that other essential device in your government office? It was a German genius, Adolf Ehinger, who invented the powered paper shredder 1935 to anonymize and obliterate his rough drafts of anti-Nazi, anti-fascist, ANTI-government, publications.

You got a job to do. It’s work. It’s not a sinecure. I understand that. But understand me. The tools and techniques and infrastructure you use every minute of every working day to accomplish your government functions – you did NOT build that.

And you work for me. My taxes pay your salary. Our constitution makes me sovereign, and you the civil SERVANT. That’s the deal. You don’t like that deal, you don’t have to keep that job. Good luck finding a better one. I suspect, like most government workers, your talents are completely wasted in the bureaucracy.

You are all WRONG the Father of the Internet is the BRITISH Genius Sir Tim- Berners Lee who invented URL’s and HTTP without which computer interconnection and server operations would be IMPOSSIBLE and the WWW just a dream. He is a PRIVATE INDIVIDUAL and he gave away his discover FREE OF CHARGE to the world.

Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA (born 8 June 1955[1]), also known as “TimBL”, is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989[2] and on 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet.[3]

Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web’s continued development. He is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, and is a senior researcher and holder of the Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).[4] He is a director of The Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI),[5] and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.[6][7]

In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work.[8] In April 2009, he was elected a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences.[

So, all that time I was using Usenet, Gopher, Archie, and logging onto (among other sites) the WELL… I wasn’t actually dialing a phone number to get a peer to peer connection, because I wasn’t using Mosaic to enter an http address? Is that the turf your claiming?

I’d say the entire aspect of “the government created the Internet” is specious. I was a young hobbyist and hacker (in the pre-Microsoft, pre-Apple days), and my experience was that Arpanet was just plain sterile. You couldn’t do much, and the various agencies and institutions connected to it controlled it with a heavy hand.

In reality, what we’d consider the Internet was created by those who went outside of the box – the people who created such things as BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), and so on. Had the government attempted to create the ‘Net, it would be as useless to the average person now as Arpanet was then.

You’re missing the point. The high-risk expense to developing something like the internet is the time to develop and test the protocols and algorithms underlying the communications. This takes a lot of man-hours and testing. Once these were developed – remembering that universities were among the initial users – the other experimenters could play with the technology.

BTW, USENET was unofficially run on a volunteer basis by Seismo, a goverment agency that sat in the middle of the US and listened for tremors from Soviet nuclear tests. But they were just another company; if they hadn’t I suppose a universiry of Bell Labs would have.

I’m really looking forward to taking the wind out of a few Dem sails with this: “I agree with Obama: Let’s slash the federal budget by 75%, and only fund services and programs that directly serve the public good.”

Fundamentally, Obozo has it backwards: technological innovations mostly lead to new infrastructure, not the other way around. There were no good roads when Henry Ford built his assembly line allowing inexpensive cars, but those cars created a reason and a demand to build good ones. Edison’s light bulb led to power grids and electric lines in urban areas first, then in rural ones.

Then there’s this little thing about where the money to build all the infrastructure came from. As noted above, much used to come from private sources. Toll roads got their start way back in the 18th century, e.g.

Public money collected from the private sector via taxation and other fees was paid to private businesses that designed and built the infrastructure—after having paid some of the taxes that made it all possible.

Finally, I would ask our Dear Leader why government did not help all the people whose businesses failed (as most start-ups do). How’s that work? Are they losers in Life’s Lottery, as Dick Gephardt famously opined?

With each passing day, The Blue-Lipped Boy King shows himself to be an utter ignoramus. In my wildest fantasy, hundreds of thousands wait on Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration day to see his limousine and then moon him and the outgoing FLATUS as they pass by. I sure hope it’s a clear day, so the top’s down.

“Should businesses pay enough taxes to support the nation’s basic physical infrastructure? Yes. Of course. And they already do. But should they pay taxes to fund every progressive social fantasy? That’s open for debate, and that’s not the point Obama and Warren were making. Overtly, at least.”

What was so annoying about Obama and Warren’s speeches is the idea that government just GAVE us things like roads and bridges. They made it sound like somebody else paid for it and not the corporations themselves. EVERYBODY pays taxes and corporations pay LOTS of taxes, and all of this money is supposedly used for the common good, such as for roads and bridges. We pay lots and LOTS of taxes at the local level, too, to have policemen, firemen, public schools and teachers. None of this is free and year after year we’re asked to pay more for these services, NOT less. So how can you try and deamonize a corporation when they not only pay taxes, but also employ the very people who are paying even more taxes into the local, state, and federal coffers?

The only answer I have is that people like Obama and Warren will not rest until they have it all, ALL of your money and have you totally dependent on the government for literally everything, like the Soviet Union. They are the most loathsome and vile creatures on the planet and should be shunned for trying to destroy capitalism, the very thing that made this country the most powerful nation on the planet. Obama and Warren want to makes us as broke and as irrelevant as France or, worse, Greece. We should never, ever, let that happen. Vote against Obama and Warren, and all of the hateful people just like them, in November. It’s the least we can do for this country.

That’s another key point that gets lost in this. Not only do the “1%” pay a hugely disproportionate share of the federal income taxes, but so do businesses, large and small. The businesses are paying for tax freeloaders, not the other way around. Yes, a politically well-connected GE can avoid taxes, but Joe’s Plumbing can’t.

Meant no disrespect to vets, disabled or otherwise. I am a vet myself.

However, my point stands. If you have not participated in the creation of all the public works, you bear no right to same. Foreigners can pay a visitors’ tax to use our roads. Those on welfare can cough up some of their alms to help pay for them.

Those who have made the sacrifice to the nation need not pay taxes or other fees. In my world…that’s what I call fair.

I just get nervous when I see the pay no taxes get nothing stuff, it just seems a slippery slope that could easily be abused.
yeah us vets paid while on duty too, state and fed taxes (even when living overseas) so we have contributed in that manner also.

it just makes me nervous, feels like we could easily grant powers to people that would hurt us.

Since roads are mostly state-funded, they are largely paid by user fees. I recall at the time I lived there:

(1) New Jersey has tolls on the GSP and Turnpike.
(2) Maryland charges extra gas tax
(3) Pennsyvania just doesn’t bother. When traveling to Harrisburg from Baltimore there was a little bump at the state border. (This may have changed.)

If a state wants to pay out of income tax, so that goods can get to market, that’s her (states are female, right?) decision.

Now to have a rule that anyone on welfare (will need to be defined, of course) cannot vote – this I would be happy to go along with.

Many vets paid by the loss of arms, legs, other body parts and in my case the loss of my voice box and part of my thyroid from cancer, affecting me for the rest of my life. This was due to the use of herbicides not checked for the effect they would have 25 years after people being exposed to them. What have you given? Also prior to and for 24 years after that I paid taxes annually and on higher than averagee income plus started a business after becoming disabled, employed people, paid business taxes and income tax on the profits that were made by the company and what income I derivived from it ! Business owners in most cases are subject to double taxation and as for what Pres. Oblummer said I did build that business from money saved and many long hours of work which it takes. What does he and his big assed Michelle do to earn their money other than take vacations and play golf on the taxpayers dime ! It is time for Congress also to take responsibility and be subject to term limits and not have lifetime income or jobs ! ! !

I have long thought that recipients of welfare should not be eligible to vote. A person living off the public dime is beholden to the government, and to whoever campaigns on maintaining the welfare system. In a sense, I am opposed to public sector workers (unionized public workers)having the vote. I know this is all heresy but consider the participation of SEIU in Wisconsin, in almost every state. Consider the number of times the NEA rallies its members to increase funding or programs.I recall welfare recipients demonstrating in the 90′s. California is broke because of the public sector employee benefit packages. Public sector unions have been strong arming the private sector much the way the mafia does small business owners. Is any of this the way a free republic should be run???

Let’s not let Obama and Warren forget they are collecting 18.5 cents a gallon on gasoline, and 24.5 cents from truckers on Disel. By all indication the feds are making a bigger margin than the evil oil companies, who have to pay for the exploration, equipment, manpower,refining cost and permit fees. Everyone who has driven a 18 wheeler, SUV, VW Beatle or even mowed their lawn has helped create the roads and bridges we all use and pay for.

The other thing that really irks me about the whole thing, especially when Warren got all “you put your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for.” Not only does she suggest that only the “rest of us” paid for it, if it weren’t for these businesses she is demonizing, those taxes “the rest paid for” would never have been collected in the first place. Without these “evil” businesses creating jobs, they would have NO INCOME to tax. No jobs, no income taxes.

Sure you are as he never implied this or anything of the sort (Zombie states) “When Obama implied at the Roanoke, Virginia rally that some businessmen refuse to pay for public works from which they benefit, he presented a thesis which, like a three-legged stool, relies on three assumptions that must all be true for the argument to remain standing”

If Obama’s statement does not contain the notion that businessmen are resistant to or unhappy about or dismissive of paying for infrastructure, then what was the purpose of his speech?

Did Obama say this: “Everybody, including and especially wealthy business owners, gladly pay their fair share of taxes for the public benefit. That’s just great. Let’s give those business owners a round of applause!” ?

No, he didn’t.

Embedded in his speech is the very clear implication that business owners are skating along and getting a free ride from the public commons, and aren’t appreciative of how much they profit from infrastructure.

Implicit in his speech was that we should be eliminating the tax breaks that go to the people who incomes once they reach 250K. Implicit in his speech is the conservatives do not care about the deficit because they don’t want that to be eliminated. It has nothing to do with businessmen.

I think it’s hysterically funny that you’re trying to draw a distinction between “income North of $250k” and “businessmen”. If he’s not talking about businessmen whom IS he talking about? Lottery winners? The Barksdale organization?

What’s even funnier is that you’re talking about what’s implicit in the speech while claiming to know what he meant. At the same time you say that by addressing what was EXPLCITLY said Zombie is making assumptions. You (unsurprisingly) have things exactly backwards.

Can it be anymore clear? Modern Liberal implications are never what they “think they meant” in there heads. Their implications are simply “Ok”, “allowed”, implicitly. Why? Because. Just because. Because of circle jerk logic.

Why? Because. Because of the straight jacket I’m in. I must love Mr. President or else… The economy is down, must be a lie. The telescreen is flashing!

Oh yes, I am wise
But it’s wisdom born of pain
Yes, I’ve paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to
I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am Modern Liberal… Because.

Poor James – you ask what I think he was saying and I try to tell you and you respond that how did I know? I don’t know nor does Zombie know and that’s the whole point which seems to be lost here. Zombie is trying to score some political points with the PJM crowd by trying to say here is what he meant in which I pointed out I think he’s wrong.

Now regarding your idiotic statement about people making over 250K having to be businessman – my mother who is 93 makes over 250K and she doesn’t even know what day it is nor I suspect do many people who have inherited wealth or good paying jobs. Or are you saying everyone who makes 250K are businessmen like some policemen in Boston who do a lot of detail work.

Are you, or are you NOT, cheerfully advocating Obamas plan to RAISING TAXES ON YOUR 93 YEAR OLD MOTHER!

If she “earns” 250K a year, good for her.

The taxes they take out of that NOW, are plenty high enough already, she does NOT OWE anything more. Its HER MONEY, not Obamas

For the love of god, son, you should be screaming to Obama louder than me to leave that old woman alone, and let her pass as much of that money to her children/grandchildren/great grandchildren, dog, cat fish or hampster if she so chooses.

If she would like to “donate” it to the government, thats her right, but the tax rates are HIGH ENOUGH NOW….

Youre advocating Jacking taxes on his 93 year old mother?

Ever consider just cutting to the chase, and calling yourself “Masshole?”

BLibby, there is a difference between “wealth” and “income”. Your grandma is wealthy, but does she actually earn 250K a year? If she does, then she has a killer 401(k). People who are worth >250K are not necessarily earning 250K each year. Obama wants to tax wealth, not just income. And once he starts taxing wealth, there goes the neighborhood, because accumulating wealth is the object of every working American.

The notion that those who make over $250,000.00 annually pay no taxes is ludicrous ! The taxes they pay are higher on owned real estate than many middle income peole make in a year or even those who make $100K. Plus the investments that people with this type of income maake are in BUSINESS which employs many people who in turn pay taxes, the companies have fleets of trucks that pay gasoline and road use taxes which are amazingly high; so do not think that the government pays for the roads and infrastructure when the taxes and road use fes are what supply the money for infrastructure which has been mismanaged and repairs not made for many years and are causing problems now as they wear out ! The money that winds up getting to these programs are part of Obama’s Stimulus which has proven to be a GRET BIG FAILURE and the money we use now or much of it because of increased entitlement programs cause us to borrow often at $.40 on every dollar and is wasted on generations of those who are on the public dole and were raised to think they are due ! The “Reality” is that the long term unemployed are a drop in the bucket when compared to welfare, food stamps(SNAP), and because they are too damn lazy to get off of their behinds and try and find work; the things that they think they are owed they expect and grumble when they no longer qualify!
One example is a situation that happened in Jacksonville, Florida on Friday 07/20/12 when 300 Black Youths went into a Super Walmart and virtually destroyed the store tearing things up and destroying merchandise, scaring customers and all because they were bored after a party and felt that they were owed something! Wow what an example to their families and to others who saw this happen !

Innumeracy. Big problem. As with all of Obama’s diamond-matrix lies, you need to take it apart. You say implicit is that conservatives do not care about the deficit because they do not favor ending tax breaks for earners over $250,000 a year. There are no tax breaks for them. There are the tax rates in place. What conservatives don’t want to do is increase income tax rates–on anyone, in any bracket, including that of earners over $250,000. Increasing the tax rate on these earners as Obama wants to would not do anything about the deficit of any significance–the Obama deficits have been about 20 times the revenues that might be gained from raising these earners’ top marginal tax rate. Increasing the tax rates on earners below this would have 425% the revenue impact of raising tax rate on the higher incomes.

Of course, the big lie is that because conservatives don’t want to raise tax rates on anyone, they must not care about the deficit. But there’s another way to reduce the deficit: Spend less. Hey, conservatives do want to do that! And Democrats and liberals do not. Which means, of course, that they don’t care about the deficit.

There’s also the lack of distinction between earned income and wealth, between salaries and investment income (Warren Buffet earns a salary of $100k/year managing his fund), and between net and gross income – as well as the fact that most small business owners file their business taxes on their personal tax returns.

BostonLib. The president provided the list. 1.The Internet, Fire and police protection, and Education. Please re-read the article and then read the comments. You might learn something about the American way.

I like the “how do you know what they REALLY THINK? Are you a MIND READER?” argument after every one of Dear Leader’s gaffes.

Well, I know what he really think by listening to this thing called “speech” which he uses to tell us what he thinks. For example, when he says “you didn’t build that”, I think he thinks you didn’t build that.

It’s not a new invention; people have been using it to read each other’s minds for 200,000 years or so.

“Spoken by a man who never created or ran so much as a candy store,” syndicated columnist and FOX News contributor Charles Krauthammer said in response to President Obama criticizing individual achievements in business this weekend. “And it’s completely a straw man argument as if conservatives and Republicans are arguing to disband the fire department and the police department so we could all individually do it on our own. The idea that infrastructure is necessary and good is as old as the republic. It’s older than that. The Romans had the Via Appia, and that wasn’t exactly a new idea. And they had sewers as well. The question is what are you doing with the money when you build the infrastructure?”

“You heard Obama talking about the moonshot. This was not on that clip, but in that speech. He went through a list of the great achievements that the government has done, the moonshot. Well, Obama is the guy who shut down the moon program, the manned space program so that today we have to outsource our access into space for any American astronaut who wants to go to the space station we have to pay the Russians $50 million a shot,” Krauthammer said on the “Special Report” panel tonight.

Many of the voyages of discovery by sea were not government enterprises but private commercial operations. They were funded by the pioneering mechanism of selling shares in themselves, shares that could be bought and sold.

Today, we would have not only lunar landings but near-earth asteroid landings were it not for initial government resistance to private space exploration enterprises. I’m happy to see that NASA is now contracting out for launch services. However, some good, privately funded companies fell by the wayside before government realized that private industries doing their own development, or taking government-originated technology and evolving it to further uses (which government can’t and shouldn’t do), brings even more benefits to society and the economy.

But then, the proggie mindset is one of using private enterprise as milk cows, believing good things come only from government, government and more government.

“Many of the voyages of discovery by sea were not government enterprises but private commercial operations.”

And let’s not forget both the Virginia colony and the Plymouth Bay colony. Yep, the first two successful English colonies (1607 Jamestown and 1620 Plymouth) both began as privately-funded ventures. One wonders what the world would look like if the venturers had instead waited for the government to do something.

Of course Plymouth was a government operation. England made it impossible for them to live in England. The massive Jewish immigration was government-funded – that is, by the Czar declaring unilateral war on his Jewish subjects.

(On the other hand, the State of Israel was caused by private enterprise – the Arab pogrom artists of the 20s and 30s and the Poles who tried to finish the job after the Germans were defeated.)

If I were to respond to the prez’ argument about the space program I might say something like…

McDonald Douglas built the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft,
North American Aviation built the Apollo command module and the service module,
Grumman built the LM,
The Saturn V was built by such businesses as North American Aviation, Douglas Aircraft Company, and IBM,
NAA/Rocketdyne built the F-1s on the SC-I Saturn booster stage,
etc…

NASA put forth the specs and made sure it all worked as the missions required. NASA was a management organization that took the dollars provided for by companies such as those listed above AND all the other tax payers. NASA managed the missions. NASA would not have existed without the private taxpayer base. A base, for the most part, that did not take government funding to exist.

NASA did a magnificent job in managing the effort, but they built d@mned little. But NASA did give us Apollo I, Challenger, and Columbia. Columbia may have been an accident in the broadest sense, but Apollo I and Challenger were brought to you by political decisions and pressures.

Why is there no moon program? Political decisions shut down that back in the late 60s and early 70s. Government wasted all that money and effort. That is what government can do best. And after wasting a bunch more money on developing a new booster that gets the government axe after one … ONE … test flight. More money wasted. What now? We start from scratch AGAIN???? Government management at its best.

Mr. prez… the more government grows the worse our economy becomes. Before long people will be saying ‘we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.’

Don’t forget Chrysler, who did the first stage of the Saturn IB. Interestingly enough, Chrysler submitted a proposal for an onion-shaped VTOL reusable as part of the competition for the shuttle. It was called SERV and capable of about 125,000 lbs into LEO. There is a WIKI page on it.

I would blame Columbia on NASA management which refused a DoD offer to take a close look at her wing leading edges the day after it became apparent it was hit during launch.

There is an environmentalist component to both Challenger and Columbia also. Challenger got bit by the ban on asbestos. Columbia may have gotten bit by the CFC ban.

The Apollo shutdown was particularly galling as they had a production line in place capable of turning out 12 stacks a year (providing funding was available). The Apollo lawn ornaments are mostly flight hardware for the final three missions which were cancelled.

And NASA turns right around and does it again with shuttle, turning them into lawn ornaments rather than selling them to the highest bidder and turning them into one-shot, turnkey man-capable space platforms. Remember the old GD-Convair wingless orbiter study? We could have done 4 – 150 ton platforms. Still can.

Happily the commercial guys are stepping out quite nicely with their plans to do asteroid exploration. It is only a generation late. Cheers -

“The real issue of the campaign is precisely what Obama said. That’s precisely at the center of the division, left and right, between Republican and Democratic. How do you see the free enterprise capitalism in American society? Obama said clearly that it’s rooted in success as a result of government, infrastructure. And the worst part about it is he says it’s because we’re all in this together, it’s society that ultimately supports you. Yes, society but Obama always identifies society or collective action with the government. In fact, society is civil society. It’s the family, it’s the church. It’s the little platoons that were talked about in Tocqueville about Americans organize themselves in organizations that are voluntary. That’s society; that’s what sustains us, it’s not government. And this emphasis on government and it’s at the root of all good in America is what’s wrong with the Obama vision and that’s what Romney ought to attack. That’s what the campaign ought to be about,” Krauthammer said on “Special Report” tonight.

I have been writing about how Obama’s education reforms, the actual implementation of Common Core, what College and Career Ready actually mean, Positive School Climate, what’s actually in those NCLB waivers, are all grounded in pushing the communitarian ethos that rejects the idea that the individual is paramount. It is that mindset Obama wants to make sure is cultivated through all education, K-12 and higher ed.

What he stated poorly in that Roanoke speech is that “we-ness” takes precedence philosophy. It’s why the Progressives do not want to bad mouth what he said. So I went back and found Amitai Etzioni’s written expression of what Obama and the Progressives believe should be the new American 21st century values.

“. . .the neoclassical paradigm [of liberty] lacks the concepts and perspective required to understand the sociological and psychological conditions under which people are free, and liberty is preserved. Individuals can reason best, and are least subject to manipulation and to government intervention, when they are members of a community, when they can rely on their bonds to their fellow citizens, on their We-ness, for psychological anchoring and social support.”

Don’t you love the reference that govt intervention is necessary if that’s not your view or values?

Thing is, that IS my view, and the view of my Church (Catholic Christian, Roman Rite, Ordinary Form). The problem with, first, Obama’s and Warren’s POVs is, as already stated, it conflates the Gov’t and civil society, and second, with YOUR POV (Individual is paramount) is 1. it conflates having rights and priority, and 2. it is conducive to selfishness.

Good stuff Zombie. Another point that does not get much attention is the fact that when businesses open, expand or develop new properties, they may be subject to local government review. This review can take the form of a use permit, building permit, re-zone application, general plan amendments and so forth ad nauseum.

During the processing of these “discretionary use applications”, local agencies can (and do!) place conditions on the project. These conditions can be just about anything from street widening, intersection and traffic light improvements, installation of curb, gutter and side walk to sewer, storm drain and water main construction. All out of the “developers” pocket, before even being open for business. Of course the applicant must also pay for the “studies” needed to determine exactly what needs to be built.

This, of course, does not include any operating costs such as: business licence, regulatory permits, inspections, vehicle registration and so on and so forth.

Good point. I live in an area with well water and septic systems. The local public utility is slowly but surely expanding water and sewer services and as they do, guess who gets billed? That’s right, the homeowners. And there is no choice to opt out.
They follow that bill by increasing the appraised value of your property and jacking up your property tax rate to pay for the other “societal benefits” that BostonLib and his/her ilk are so fond of.

Barry talks as though there is some benevolent public collective that distributes its largess to we, the selfish citizens or small business owners, who don’t want to share the cost as though the money doesn’t come from us in the first place.

I just hope enough voters can finally see just how clueless this Marxist ideologue really is because the MSM is going to run cover for him until November.

Classic government self justification. Government decides something should be done, forces you to pay for it, then takes credit for everything you produce after that since you used ‘their’ stuff to do it. Kind of like a kid insisting that Mama let them lick clean the cake bowl, then insisting they get credit for making the cake since they helped clean the bowl.

Exactly! Let’s take this further.. If you were born a marginalized kid from a broken home and ended up at Harvard…You didn’t do that either. Government did! And if you then become a Senator representing the State of Present, you didn’t do that either! Government did! And then if you become the President, that almost certainly owes everything to Uncle Sam too!

That speech wasn’t some deep thought of his, it was his LIFE STORY! He’s the living embodiment of ‘Julia.’

Hey Brat – you have in the course of this discourse kicked the blanket off the core of Obama’s remarks: CRT and it’s egregious ancillary ideology(ies).These didatic and often convoluted discussions couched in scholary discourse are little more than a “street” jargon of entitlement” ” I’am doing all the work you make all the money”, from someone who has no investment or risk involved and absolutely nothing on the line. More has to be said about this strange ideology so popular in the Obama administration (and Scotus).

In these videos, note the tone of voice, and body language, of these paragons of compassion. The sneering mockery of individual achievement, by the Great Community Organizer Obama. The clenched fists, the violent gestures and hatred of an individual’s claim to merit, by the Great “Tribalist” Warren.

Isn’t the government for the people and by the people? Doesn’t the government work for us, or does Obamalamadingdong think we work for him? I pay more than my “fair share” in taxes and I greatly appreciate the benefits of local emergency agencies and our military defending our country, however, seeing my tax dollars going to “social justice” programs makes me feel used, frustrated, and abandoned. I “Hope” we have a “Change” and that at least Romney gets elected President this fall.

Besides which, we have perfect, complete and voluminous data about human progress when governments controlled everything. That was life before the American revolution and capitalism transformed humanity.

And sure, there were some nice things. The pyramids, the Pantheon, Roman Aqueducts, lots of military fortifications, gunpoweder and reams of weapon systems. You could even make a case that Michealangelo’s genius was the result of government (papal) patronage. Yes, there were many magnificant government edifaces in the 9700 years or so of total government control after humanity traded clubs for plows.

But what about the 99.9% of the people who weren’t kings, princes and obamas?

Not so good. Ordinary people lived essentially the same way in 1750 AD as they had in 1750 BC. Dirt farms, hovels, sunup to sundown labor, one set of clothes, and an early death.

Now look at where you are about 250 years later. A baby born today will live to 90, perhaps longer. Few of you work more than 50 hours a week. Many don’t work at all. Airplanes, television, computers, the internet, miracle drugs, Dick Tracy devices. Boredom and obesity are now some of the biggest problems around. Quite an advance over praying that your kids would survive to adulthood. Children today feel deprived if they don’t own a phone that puts the knowledge of the ages in the palm of their hand (not that they care much about that aspect of it). And oh yeh, I forgot to mention indoor plumbing…one of my favorites. The Royal Court of Louis the XIV shit in the stairways, you know. Your job, if you had been alive then would have been to clean the shit up.

THAT’s what happened when the Founding Fathers recognized that an ocean between them and George III meant they had a fighting chance to be free people.

The rest is history.

But obama doesn’t like it. He likes the “fairness” model. You know, the one that was the only political model for 9700 years. The one where he and a few cronies own and control everything. And where you feel lucky to have a hovel and some crumbs that the government gives you. obama bucks.

Thanks Zombie for drawing the curtain open on these guys. I believe we are in serious trouble. The communists are seizing power and have been steadily for decades. We’re paranoid right up until the moment we’re either thrown out or gathered up.

To be perfectly honest, you should probably add another few percentage points to the list. For example, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs should be counted with the Defense Department, as should roughly half of the Department of Energy (which, for obscure political reasons, maintains the nation’s nuclear weapons for DoD). There’s a lot of research in the Department of Commerce (NIST) and NASA. The Corps of Engineers builds and maintains infrastructure that is often as essential as highways. You could argue that the diplomatic functions of the State Department (although probably not the foreign aid) contribute to national security. Et cetera. OTOH, you could strip some non-essential boondoggles out of the Defense Department budget. The end result is still between 25% and 30% of the current Federal budget being spent on essentials as defined by these speeches.

Yes, I realize that the way the responsibilities of the Fed departments are bizarrely divided up makes it difficult to tease out a discrete percentage. Considering how much of the DoD is about non-research, and also funding the very kinds of military excursions that libs like Obama have decried for decades as unnecessary to peace and safety at home, I think it’s ends up as a wash — even if we include your categories, we’re still at about 25%. But thanks for pointing that out nonetheless.

I don’t think corporations truely pay any tax, they may be taxed at a certain percent but it is the consumer who pays the tax in ever increasing prices. Taxing corporations helps to fuel inflation, along with printing a gadzillion zillion dollars.

Yes, yes, I know — everything corporations pay out is in the end paid for by their customers (where else would they get the money?)and thank you for responding, but do any of you know whether that top few percent of tax payers that pay such a high percent of taxes,individuals or large corporations?

Yes, they do. Unless they are politically connected to the govt and can run three sets of books as the govt does. H/T GE and GMC. But it is counted as a cost of doing business and although it was payed in the prior year it will be recouped in the following year. Think of it as the fuel left in the hose when you fill your car. It goes past the meter but doesn’t make it to your tank until you fill up after the next guy at some point down the road.

Hey Mr. Obama! That Solyndra loan to your buddies, you did not make that on your own. Millions of taxpayers worked their butts off to send money to Washington for you to fritter away.

Hey Mr. Mcconnel! That earmark you got for your buddies you did not make that earmark on your own. Millions of taxpayers worked their butts off to send money to Washington so you can grant favors to the toadies and goons that leach from federal goverment.

“Government” in this particular discussion is shorthand for “communal pooling of resources for mutual benefit.”

Not quite. Private citizens can and do “pool resources for mutual benefit.” Every corporation or privately operated charity does so. Government does it through coercive mechanisms, involving the threat of punishment, which private action is forbidden to employ.

The phrase “give something back,” so commonly used throughout the culture when referring to philanthropic works, is loathsome. It implies that something was taken, and the person, or business, that took it owes something to society in return. Productive businesses and successful people give far more to society than they take, and their philanthropy should be viewed as precisely what it is, selfless altruism. Success is not theft.

Whether you like Romney or not this election is about getting Obama out of the Oval Office and getting America back on track. If Romney doesn’t live up to expectations he can be replaced too in four years. Whatever, Obama must get the boot.

We should all be referring to this supremely revealing and ignorant speech from here on as obama’s “Friday the 13th speech”, to amke it stand out and engender interest in the great disinterested masses.

The problem with that is we’ll be falling into the same trap as the Democrats of pandering to emotions, which is patronizing and unfair. I am not saying we should take the so-called “high road”, but we should talk to adults as adults.

Excellent analysis. I use the local tax issue on education all the time, also pointing out to people that damn near everything they don’t like about education is mandated by Federal, rather than state or local, law.

The next time you hear any liberal talking about “investments,” ask them what “investments” were made by Obama’s $780 billion stimulus package.

A road, an airport, even (though I disagree with it) a high speed rail link would qualify as investments.

But most of the stimulus package spending went to bail out state and local governments. And bail them out from what? From the gigantic unfunded pension and health care obligations made to public employees–obligations that required really tough decisions (cf. Scott Walker in Wisconsin)

A pension plan is not an investment in the future. It’s a reward for hard work done in the past.

Right. Even if you concede for the sake of argument that these entrepreneurs owe their success to the public infrastructure, Obama has infinite chutzpah claiming credit for it. I don’t see any more roads and bridges than were there 4 years ago. The “stimulus” didn’t build that.

” …….you didn’t build that……Somebody else made that happen”…. but without you those …..”roads and bridges”….. probably wouldn’t have been built. Without the property taxes you paid on your land and building, the sales taxes you collect on the products you sell, the income taxes you paid on the business profits you earned and the income taxes you paid on your personal income, it probably would not be possible to have “this unbelievable American system that we have”…..

I think Al meant it as a compliment, because the “real” journolistos like Juan Williams et al say that the blogosphere is nothing and not real journolism. He may have misused the word irony. But either way it is delicious. Thanks for your efforts.

This class warfare that is being perpetrated frosts me because it is *DANGEROUS*. 1797; 1917; 1939. I’m sure, being that the POTUS is the smartest person ever to walk the face of the earth, he is well aware of the game he is playing.

Some people go around praising and thanking God for everything and saying they could not even have begun to have got it or done it without Him. His Royal Majesty, King Insane Hussein Obama, feels that he should have no less position and worship for himself and from everybody. This is Obama’s pathology. The man is nuts.

To Insane Hussein everything comes from the state, which is now him, and without it, and him, individuals would be nothing and have nothing, when in fact the state gets everything it has from individuals and would be nothing, and have nothing, without them. Obama is quite mad – on the level of a rabid dog. He should be locked up in a mental institution.

My first reaction in hearing Obama’s speech was that the reason Obama believes that “You didn’t do that….” is because he’s always had somebody carrying his water. As our first affirmative action president, Obama knows that he didn’t really do anything. Everyone else did something for him.

In fact, I believe the underlying reason for Roberts upholding ObamaCare was that Roberts didn’t want to be the one who killed the signature legislation of the first Black president. It had nothing to do with the law. It had everything to do with being ‘politically correct’.

“…There are some government activities that benefit us all, including business owners.”

If public safety means, according to Warren, that “You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory”, I don’t think Gibson Guitars will be willing to concede that particular point. Nor will the many business owners who do have to hire some one to protect their businesses from other types of thieves.

Even in the grammatically implausible and ideologically surprising case that Obama was referring to the bridges and roads as what the entrepreneurs “didn’t build”, it shows a shocking deep and fundamental misunderstanding of where government money comes from.

Government can raise money in two ways: taxation and debt. Taxes are taken through threat of penalty, and almost always based on economic activity, such as recognized income. Debts are promises made on the taxing of future generations, and bought with money intended for investment, another function of economic activity.

On the other hand, the corporations they demonize can only make money through voluntary exchange. They don’t make money unless they produce something people are willing go out and trade their dollars for.

The bridges and roads were built with a portion skimmed off the activity of people creating things that people actually want and willing trade for. So yes, entrepreneurs did build those, and provided people with other things they wanted along the way.

“it shows a shocking deep and fundamental misunderstanding of where government money comes from.”

Er, you *ARE* referring to people who consider tax cuts (ie, taking less from the people) to be government spending. They frankly believe they have first call on every penny you earn, every moment of your life.

This is essentially it: if the world doesn’t give me the success and happiness I DESERVE, it is the evil system’s fault.

A typical example of this type is the psuedo-intellectual Morris Berman, whose career (he’s an historian) went nowhere. Also, from his biography, it is clear he never married, has no children, and no attachment to any other loved one, denying him the comfort and value that comes from that, too.

He then found the REAL reason for his lack of success: America is evil, in decline, and worthless. He stopped writing history books and started writing “America is evil” (and especially “American capitalism is evil”) books: people are too stupid and greedy, we need a new class of saviors to prevent a NEW dark age from descending. Then he nominates — surprise, surprise, surprise — people just like himself: “aren’t focused on celebrity culture, haven’t sold out to the corporate world, nomadic and creative”.

Oh, and of course he is in favor of a “very steep tax on the rich” and quotes as his guides Mao, Lenin (approving his idea of murder of the evil capitalists, who have it coming for “killing our children”), and Marx. You’re surprised, right?

This is how it goes — from private resentment to adolescent world-saving plans to supporting mass murder.

“Last night my four year old counted to 100. At first I thought this was a nice accomplishment for a pre-school child. But then I remembered the words of our President and I reconsidered what I should say to her.

I told her that she did not learn to count to 100 on her own. Someone else created our base ten system of numbering. Someone else created the card with the numbers she read. Someone else took her to school and taught her. I remonstrated her for her arrogance in being proud of “her” accomplishment, as it was not her own.

I was glad I had not missed this opportunity to correct her. The odd thing is, now she doesn’t want to learn to count past 100. I am completely confused by her sudden disinterest. Can someone explain this to me?”

Great essay. To put together such a relatively short essay chock full of detailed information (much of which I wasn’t aware of) must have taken a lot of work. I’ve read about your work before, specifically in James Taranto’s “Best of the Web”. I hope you can make a business out of this. Thanks

This one speech will be forever noted by historians as the day when President Obama jumped the shark. In this speech, he has crystallized the difference between the parties. In so doing, people see what he and his fellow Democrats stand for in stark contrast to what Romney and the Republican party stands for.

I predict this speech will be replayed prominently before the election.

President Obama couldn’t have made his position any clearer, and now we know who and what we’re voting for.

Gork I totally agree. However, this brief speech was foreshadowed by Obama’s powerful marxist breakout speech in Osawatomie, KS, December 6, 2011 and by Andy Stern’s marxist, anti-USA manifesto in the WSJ a few days earlier.

Obama would not be in office without Alice Palmer, wright, farrakhan, Pflegerr, ayers, stern, rathke brothers, SEIU, ACORN, marxist New Party, and many other from the far left. Time to link them and this speech can be the vehicle. Soros funded and SEIU, AFL-CIO organized Occupy street protests should help to focus attention when they hit the streets soon. First term he did not enrich them but second term, ‘it is on’.

I realize that my numbers are “off” for a variety of reasons: First, as you point out, that we’re spending trillions we don’t even have; second, that Social Security and Medicare are theoretically in a separate “pool” of funds; and third, that there is a huge amount of overlap, duplication and mislabeling among the departments’ responsibilities. I was just giving a rough calculation to get the point across that the essential human and physical infrastructure referred to by Obama and Warren is actually only a comparatively small percentage of the overall budget.

If I say you’re both/all right do I get a wimp award? Private companies, contracted by the government further developed, for government use, technology originating at universities/colleges/private research facilities contracted by the government–and later the same or other private companies took those technologies and adapted them for consumer goods. Like stereo speakers developed originally for WWII. See how it works? Government and private companies work together, not just one or the other. The President is an idiot for opening the particular line of thought, though,’cause taking things to the start of this country one unavoidably faces the fact that rich white men (I’m not those things) started this country, financed its infrastructure, shared power willingly or unwillingly, but peacefully, except for one awful 4 year stretch. My kids tell me I’ll get slammed for that observation, so I’m ready for you–

Ok… so Obama basically re-gurgitated Elizabeth Warrens’ speech from 2010 when he talked about “…somebody else made that happen.” Let’s look at it…
The top 5% of income earners pay approximately 60% of the money the government rakes in through income taxes. Approximately HALF of working Americans DONT PAY income taxes at all. They get a return that is more than they paid. Let’s call those people the poor and working poor. What percentage of those do you think vote for democrats usually? Pretty safe to say MOST. Like 98%. Now, Government workers, state and federal, are not producers. Not like landscapers, carpenters, farmers, mechanics, etc. In fact, government workers are a NET DRAIN on the economy! The money they make was confiscated from producers through taxation. They do pay taxes, but the money they pay is only about 15% of what was taxed from the producers, and so… NET DRAIN. So, when Warren, and then Obama, wants to talk about the luxurious environment that government has provided so rich people can get richer, and they want to talk about “the roads the rest of us paid for,” who is she talking about? The rich paid for the roads, police, teachers, defense, ETC! All of it! The regular constituency of the democrat party didn’t pay for ANY OF IT! Bring it on, Obama… every time you open your mouth, more bull$hit comes flying out…

As a retired teacher of gifted students, I can personally attest to the fact that government aid can negatively effect enterprize

The schools in which I taught were all funded by local governments although there was some federal funding of classes for “exceptional’ students. This can mean very bright kids or the other extreme. The average kid gets nothing special but funding for the handicapped was very good. The bright kids didn’t get much.
The minority student who benefited from federal aide got into the gifted program on his own….he was not part of a quota as we felt many other minority kidws were. He went through Headstart and was admitted to the gifted program when he was 8 years old. He did the least work possible although he always had much encouragement from teachers and mentors in the community. He was very proficient in lying and cheating. Even other students complained about that. When in middle school his guidance counselor, also a minority, found a minority retired colonel to serve as his mentor. The kid was given every possible advantage. The last I read of this student was his name in a crime column in a local paper. He had committed a serious and violent crime. All the government help and special porograms had done nothing except possibly strengthen negative leadership qualities.
I have always heard that criminals like to rob places next to highways since the road enables them to make a quick getaway. The subway system in DC was a great enabler. Shopping centers on a line were fodder for gangs,shoplifting. and assaults.
Successful people have had helpful mentors for years….many have never received a penny of government aide. Crooks and the lowest scum of humanity also benefit from bridges, highways, and government health programs. For every successful entrepreneur who has benefitted from government funded anything, there are plenty of the very unsuccessful who have used the very same thing. There are few people who go from the government homeless programs to being millionnaires because of a bright idea or even hard work.
Plenty of people work hard but just never had the bright idea, luck or je ne sais pas to make a fortune or start a company.

Education should not be conceded as necessary and universally beneficial. Education spending by the federal government has not improved education, but harmed it. And education is a personal, private good. Is it good that people be educated? Well, with appropriate caveats (how much–does everyone need a PhD education?), yes. But is it good that people have shelter and food? Yes. But they’re still private goods that the individual reaps, and which can be done for an individual without having to do it for all individuals.

IMO we need to move the focus past warren and obama to Soros groups and the clinton/soros center for american destruction, the billionaire club, Democracy Alliance and unknown foreign individuals and nations.

Liz and the preezy are just the front men and are temps. The war for our GDP, sovereignty, military, and resources is just gearing up and needs to be brought to the forefront by November 6.

The actual conflict MUST be brought into the debate, all public info, like the Soros agenda.

Nearly 50% of Americans pay NO INCOME TAX WHATSOEVER. So that even before you start talking about FAIR SHARES there is already UNFAIRNESS in that the TAXPAYING 50% are already CARRYING the 50% of BENEFIT ENTITLEMENT SCROUNGERS.
Unfortunately for the USA this feckless SCROUNGER 50% also get a vote and guess who they vote for Sugar Daddy big Government Barry HUSSEIN Soetero of course which is why he preaches CLASS WARFARE to them .

DARPA has been the jewel in the crown for fifty years, and I believe funded a lot of the early work that lead to the Internet. However, even VERY early on a lot of that was also done by commercial companies including Intel and Xerox, it was the Ethernet packet-collision technology that made local-area networks happen early on, and I *think* that was nearly all private work – someone go count the patents and see, I’m not even going to try to Google it. And then again it wasn’t going to make anybody any money until and unless (a) fiber optics came along and made bandwidth cheap, and (b) moby-scale integrated circuits came along and made both cycles and memory cheap. Neither of these were in any noticeable way dependent on government money. Finally, the DARPA budget for anything in the vicinity of the Internet, over twenty years starting around 1968, was probably on the order of $100,000,000 in current dollars, about 1/5th of the Solyndra boondoggle alone. Fortunes have been both made and lost in venture capital, but DARPA has been pretty chincy all along, probably the key to their success. A bigger number was probably the DoD and government consumption of early workstations and routers and such, 100% funded by private companies.

OK. For your main point, I think you need a total rework. The 25% you list is almost all discretionary. The BIG numbers are social security and the like, as shown on your chart. Social security has its own funding – I *think* that number shown is made up even today 98% of just the payroll-tax funded amounts. That may change drastically over the next few years for the worse, but right now it’s a push. The first six items are more than 75%, so what do we do, quibble over which way to count defense?

The ugly truth is that Medicare alone has such humongous unfunded liabilities, it dwarfs any attempt to make rational arguments about how to pay for it. The only way out is to narrow the program dramatically over the next thirty years, WHILE spending huge funds on it AND printing more money as a tax on wealth than kyou Mr. Bernanke. A lot of old ladies are not going to get their free scooters. I suppose a lot of highly paid surgeons are going to be replaced by GS-11′s doing heart bypasses in repurposed post offices. It won’t be pretty.

That all said, AS YOU SAY above, there is a kernel of truth in that it takes the public roads and infrastructure to let a private theater (or whatever) make money. Liberals over-generalize that to say that any dollar spent by the government must be good, or at least the effort should be made. But that’s a slippery slope, why shouldn’t the government make clothing and distribute it according to need? Our tradition is to keep the government out, except for the minimal public needs. Let’s just remember that principle, that stops entirely short of socialism. And neither is the Internet a counter-example, fat Algore to the contrary.

“You didn’t do that by yourself” — is actually totally correct — as he is referring to his crony-capitalists — who DO NOT DO IT BY THEMSELVES.

(They get presidents and bureaucrats to “regulate” their competitors out of business — and they get “subsidies” – and, etc.)

Perhaps that’s the only way the O thinks that any businesses have prospered — depending upon whose cronies they were/are. He just doesn’t know any better –it’s how he himself got “ahead” — it’s all he’s ever known.

Classic “all or nothing” liberal argument. If you want to return welfare to a safety net, then you want people starving and on the streets. If you don’t agree with Obamacare, then you want people dying. If you want to rein in the EPA, then you want rivers catching on fire. And so on…

It appears that liberals believe that all programs must grow, and by growing they mean more tax money. Ultimately, this all proves the point that Democrats use tax money to buy votes. Once they established that the 20% cradle-to-grave government dependents will ALWAYS vote Democrat, the goal has been to try to increase the numbers that become dependent on the government. Same said for keeping the the Environuts a solid Democrat bloc.

This vote buying seems so obvious to me as to be axiomic. But when I talk to many people they think that this is some conspiracy theory and I’m just a tinfoil hatter.

The whole debate can be summarized this way:
Obama and progressives believe that people exist to serve the government. Tea Party conservatives believe the exact opposite, that the government exists to serve the people.
This debate goes back to the founding of our country and the drafting of our constitution by the founding fathers. At that time, most countries were monarchies, with absolute rulers. The people living in them were not free citizens, but were subjects of that monarch. Anything that the subjects had was due to the beneficance of their monarch. Our founding fathers specifically rejected the monarchy concept, and drafted a constitution where the people were free citizens, and their property and fruits of their labor belonged to them. The government was intentionally limited in power, and staffed by people who were citizens themselves, up to and including our president. So what we are seeing is that the progressive/socialists are moving us back to being subjects of a monarchy, with a political ruling class replacing the monarchs.

Link to that please- a search brings up only the usual not very funny Fakestinians whining and singing, their kids shouting the hate they learned at momma’s knee, loudly as they can with sad faced coached theatrics and Rachel the dupe Corrie

“Obama’s Fallacy that the Goal of Government Research Is to Benefit the Private Sector” This is a very important point. U.S. commercial industries benefit tremendously from government R&D; but the vast majority of it (with the possible exception of NIST and about half of NASA) is done to develop technologies for specific government/National aims. NASA publishes a magazine, Tech Briefs, each month detailing hundreds of technologies available for free or a nominal fee to U.S. industries which were developed as part of its efforts. I work in a government lab developing advanced infra-red sensors for the military. Recently, these sensors have started finding their way to police and fire departments (the firemen especially like them for seeing through smoke) and even the home inspection industry.

Bleeding-edge R&D is very expensive and risky. You can sink a lot of money into technologies before you can know if it’s really feasible to build an end-product out of it. Very, very few private companies have the resources to take this kind of risk on their own; Edison labs, Bell labs, and Xerox Palo-Alto are the only ones that I know of. If you look at most new technologies, somewhere in the background is a government program which picked up the initial bills.

What Obama is saying is partially correct but intentionally misleading. It is correct that many research are founded by the Government. But that is a tradition to keep important research going strong by demonstrating it is supported by the government as well. There are many factors including national interest and future of economy which determine the faith of a research. Nevertheless, the money comes from the taxpayers and the government is in charge of allocating the money with the input from the experts. Nothing else. Romney must ask these simple questions from the president and those who are against capitalism:
“Please tell us what have you done to create a single job in your entire life?”

The second question must be:
“Why are you insisting that US becomes like Europe?, Can’t you see the writings on the wall? Beside countries as small as Denmark, is there any big European country with social agenda that has succeeded?”

The third question would be:
“Please Mr. President just check the Canada health system and tell us if it is a good system to follow or if the people are happy? How could you make progress and new discoveries in medicine in such a system?”

The problem witbh your very reasonable concerns is that you assume that Obama is honest in his ignorance and inability to reason:
this precludes the evidence that he in fact has an agenda that includes the intentional damage being caused by his actions. The fact of the matter is that tthe left has had as it’s ultimate goal the destruction of the US as a world power and as a constitutional republic. It’s not like they have been hhiding this intention, they have been practically shouting it form the rooftops for the last 80 years or so. So, is the idea that he is intentionally trying to deceive the ignorant and propagandize his base for the final push to accomplish the stated lliberal aim of ending America? Has no one ever read 1984?

I weep for the ignorant masses who created their own doom with their own decisions

And btw – “smaller” government sort of misses the mark. I want focused government. I want them to decide what they’re going to do well, and do that, and only that. We need regulation, and we’ve had the apparatus to do that in place for 40 years. We don’t need “new and improved” government, they need to fix the one they have.

As I said before, the roads and bridges that Obama was talking about were all there 4 years ago. He hasn’t built shit. If Obama wants to claim credit for that, all I can say is: you didn’t build that. Somebody else did.

I think implicit in the term “smaller” is the notion of “more efficient.” Obviously it would be foolish to chop off the 10% of government that actually gets something useful done, while retaining the useless baggage. Instead, we should trim away the fat and leave the muscle.

What a great article, and what a wonderful series of threaded replies! I wonder if the Dear Leader realized just how much he has galvanized people with that one speech.

Perhaps somebody has mentioned this and I’ve just missed it, but has anyone cosidered the flip side of Mr. Obama’s thesis? That would be, “If you did *not* take advantage of all the infrastructure and wonderful stuff that other people have provided for you, if you have *not* built up something with hard work and intelligence, then it is *your* fault.”

That is, if someone cannot be given individual credit for success, then shouldn’t individuals be blamed for not even trying? After all, look how easy it is to build up a company and become successful. Why, people who aren’t even all that smart and aren’t working as hard as many others have done it. Why didn’t you?

“contemporary anarchism is actually dominated by extreme leftists, not extreme conservatives…” Maybe technically accurate, but only because the left anarchists tend to act out in the streets. Intellectually, there is a vibrant brand of “anarchism” that is the “far side,” if you will, of libertarianism. It’s called anarcho-capitalism. The main current exponent of this concept is actually a German by the name of Hans Herman Hoppe. Excuse the oversimplification, but it essentially expounds the idea that once the power of force is “legalized” in a government entity, that government is, by definition, tyrannical. For the anarcho-capitalist, the entire legal system would be privatized, including the police and courts. Utopian idea, to be sure. But the philosophy is well worth the time to read. And sometimes I find this becoming more and more a default position from which to judge the policies and actions of government in “the land of the free…”

Left out of the argument is the billions, yes billions, of dollars “the rich” give back to society through private charities, endowments, trusts, etc. The Democrats and liberals gleefully take this money too if it comes their way, but in the end game, want it funneled through the wasteful corrupt funnel of government corruption, waste, and cronyism.

Republican Party big shots also keep mum, hopping around like little bunny rabbits, one thumb in their mouths, the other one up their asses, and while changing thumbs, act tough and turn on Michel Bachmann and Sarah Palin.

Performing the “ultimate takedown” on an *implication* is a more or less useless exercise in narcissism. Your entire argument is propped up by the *presumption* that the original implication was reasonably drawn to begin with, which, in this classic case, it was not.

You are of course free to believe that Obama’s point in Virginia was that some businessmen are tax dodgers. To be fair: some businessmen ARE tax dodgers. (One such specimen seems to be running for President, although we’ll have to see those tax returns to know for sure.)

But not everybody draws that same implication, Mr. Zombie. Most people recognize that Obama was simply pushing back against the dangerous notion that all success is individual and success is all individual. You can’t deny that your side has peddled this childish fantasy for at least forty years. It’s about time someone called you on that.

A couple other minor points, unnecessary as they are:

It doesn’t actually defend people who want to keep historically low tax rates for the very rich during a recession, to say (however questionably) that government programs that support businessmen are a relatively small percentage of the tax burden. The obvious question, given the Republican strategy of Starve The Beast, is not how big these programs are but which ones break first under pressure. When you have Republican presidential candidates in every cycle vowing to gut the Department of Education, you can see why Democrats might feel compelled to come to its defense, and especially to wonder aloud about the values and priorities that Starve The Beast manifests.

Federal government vs. local and state government: when Reagan said government was the problem not the solution, he didn’t say “but of course I’m only referring to the federal government; state and local governments are just peachy.” Of course taxes are taxes – you have to pay them all – so I suppose if you’d like to START making this kind of qualitative distinction that does probably show some small bit of progress. State and local governments are the ones that businesses have the easiest time bribing, but that’s another story…

As for your long list of government programs you blithely refer to as “a complete waste” and/or “completely optional”: keep that sort of rhetoric going, that’s what we like to see. You clearly can’t imagine how much this helps the liberal cause, and we appreciate it. You probably gave us Obama with that, and you’ll probably reelect him with that as well.

As for your long list of government programs you blithely refer to as “a complete waste” and/or “completely optional”: keep that sort of rhetoric going, that’s what we like to see.

As always, you consciously misrepresent what you read. It is not I who implies that many government programs are wasteful or optional — it is Obama and Warren who do so, when they present a rather skimpy list of tax-subsidized programs by which to justify high taxes.

Imagine this scenario:

“Dad, I need a hundred dollars to go shopping.”
“A hundred dollars?!? What in the world do you need that much money for?”
“Oh, a whole lot of necessary groceries….um…some toothpaste…we’re running low on milk…uh…and a loaf of bread. And some other stuff.”
“Like what?”
“A barrel of pickled hummingbird tongues, Tibetan truffle sauce, and jumbo-pack of caviar-flavored lollipops.”
“I see. Here’s ten bucks.”

If Obama and Warren had managed to successfully list enough “essential” federal programs to justify spending vastly more money than the government receives in tax revenues each year, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. It was their very failure to do so which proved my point, and which was the inspiration for this essay.

It should also be pointed out that when a radical leftist (such as Obama and Warren) tries to make the argument that individual prosperity is really a collective effort, they are merely dog-whistling the Marxian theory of surplus labor; that confiscatory and redistributive taxation is the means by which to reallocate that surplus; and as such, the government bureaucrat, not the entrepreneur, is the backbone of the economy.

And when these comments are considered in context with his “bitter clingers” comment, his “spread the wealth around” comment, and his justification for raising cap gains taxes only for the purposes of “fairness,” we begin to see the flesh emerge on the bones of an old Marxist.

Zombie, there it is again. You said it would happen in your essay. You pointed it out when it happened in the comments. and here it is again in the comments. It’s really quite amazing. It would be more amazing if this dope actually believed it but it’s probably just Soros funded copy/paste commenting.

These are not “government activities”; they are activities of society acting — THROUGH government — to COLLECTIVIZE costs while evenly (or unevenly) REDISTRIBUTING benefits. It is essentially extortion. MOB rule.

It is not the purpose of government to do things that “benefit us all” while imposing costs differentially on different citizens.

Dear Zombie, I appreciate how efficiently the “stool legs” were kicked out in your article,I imagine our forefathers are rolling in their graves that what they put so much effort into and worked so hard on for our future, would be so slandered,and that the American people would rather hand over every right they have,than use the brains they were given to continue a free nation with choice is disgraceful. It is good to see that there are still a few people out there who care.

This needs to be completely addressed as a campaign issue until America GETS IT. The last election cycle McCain bumbled the issue of Obama’s anti-American and alien politics. We need to go back to his odious “spreading the wealth around” comment to “Joe the Plumber” in 2008, and pair it with all of the divisive class warfare rhetoric that he’s throwing around today. He’s not bringing the country together, he’s tearing us apart.

I’m not at all surprised at the backlash to Obama’s and Warren’s speeches. They both bring home the fact that no-one makes it on their own. They both point an accusing finger at greed and inflated self worth. They both insist that big business should and must be held accountable. They both try to inject morality and social concern into the hearts and minds of everyone and specifically into business administration.

No, I’m not at all surprised that so called “self-made” business men would reject this philosophy. It undermines their entire ego structure. It tweaks at what is left of their conscience. They might not be able to buy that new yacht next year. Maybe they won’t be able to take that trip to Monte Carlo next summer. They may need to forego a few self-gratifying, self-serving moments. It might cost them a few dollars!

So, you go on picking at the specifics and ignoring the broader message.

I’m successful, self-employed and fairly affluent. Through it all, I have tried, and I think successfully, to remember my roots. I try to remember what it’s like to be a little man. I treat employees with respect and I value their contributions.

Even the man/woman pushing the broom and emptying the trash contributes meaningfully to the success of a business. If the trash isn’t removed, how long until you’re wading through refuse? How much work can you get done then?

I’m successful, self-employed and fairly affluent. Through it all, I have tried, and I think successfully, to remember my roots. I try to remember what it’s like to be a little man. I treat employees with respect and I value their contributions.

Even the man/woman pushing the broom contributes meaningfully to the success of a business. If the trash isn’t removed, how long until you’re wading through refuse? How much work can you get done then?

Let’s not forget all of the “help” that the government has provided to businesses across the country in the form of Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and Obamacare. These legislative “gems” are crippling the ability of many businesses to actually run their business and instead wasting their time tending to mountains of pointless paperwork and overhead.

Dear Zombie, Thank you for your point by point analysis of Obama’s comments pertaining to entrepreneurs, small business, individual effort, achievement and reward, etc. His comment was an attack on so many levels it is ridiculous. I copied your article and will be going over the details of it with my two daughters as a part of two Home School lessons. One on Economics and the other on Civics. At a minimum it shows why it is so important to be an informed voter and for our Candidtes to be fully vetted so we don’t elect another Socialist to the White House, and about a dozen other topics. There is so much coming at us from the Obama White House, fast and furious, that even as a college educated, hardworking, responsible conservative wife and mother, it has become quite overwhelming. Your article was helpful because your insight and the details you presented give me the specific points to take down this argument and to equip my kids with a little more understanding of how America, as our Founding Fathers designed it, and as my own parents knew it, is suppose to work.

I think Obama’s remarks highlight great injustices:
1) Since 24% or Russian households, and 21% of Scottish households are worth $1M or more (based on George Stanley’s The Millionaire Next Door, but before BHO’s input), we have to tell the politicians – who are predominantly of English, German and Irish stock – to stop favoring these Russians and Scots when distributing largesse.
2) Since immigrant blacks like Africans or Jamaicans are more likely to become worth $1M than American-born blacks, we must demand: GIVE AMERICAN BLACKS THE SAME ACCESS TO ROADS AND THE INTERNET GIVEN TO JAMAICANS AND ASIANS!
3) Since roads, bridges, teachers, Gore’s Internet & government services are what build wealth – based on Ugandans in Uganda not becoming successful at the same rate as Americans – and we all have access to those services, we need to stop all welfare payments, since anyone on welfare obviously squandered away a business handed them by the government. THEY should pay US, since they squandered our tax money.
4) If smarts and hard work DON’T increase the likelihood of success, then it follows that dumbness and laziness don’t block success. So why are we paying for public education? Lets use that money for infrastructure instead!

So Einstein did not really discover the epoch making equation: E=mc^2. No, by Pres. Obama’s logic other contemporary and earlier physicists laid the groundwork for him, in fact the chain goes back to Archimedes or even farther back… Take ANY human mental activity that creates something new and you find the individual spark though the creator is not an isolated person in his society. The statement was SOOOO ignorant that I am wondering if someone else wrote Mr.Obama’s best seller books, or his brilliant term papers at Harvard, Columbia, Occidental College, etc., etc.

1. That the public programs he mentioned in his speech constitute a significant portion of the federal budget;

Rebuttal: That’s not what he said, not what he meant, not what anybody thought he meant, and not implied, but it a good and simple example of things governments do, with a good balance of local, state, and federal funding. (No conflation implied)

2. That business owners don’t already pay far more than their fair share of these expenses

Yes, this is what he’s plainly saying, but you have made from it a strawman (That BO and EW think roads and teachers are more essential than other segments of government spending). Then you have knocked down a strawman instead of an actual pillar of argument. Please rebut the actual assertion that businesspeople are not taxed quite enough.

In my opinion, it is very difficult to tax appropriately, because the nature of taxation skews the system. Imagine if you wanted to accelerate a car by only providing power to one wheel, and to brake by only applying friction to a different wheel. Your car would be difficult to control and might even crash. This is analogous to when you do not tax some segments of an economy and tax others too heavily.

3. That these specific public benefits are a federal issue, rather than a local issue.

Because it’s the President talking and he did bring up teachers and roads as examples, it is fair to address those. TL;DR: Each level of government spends according to its best interests.

Roads: As you point out, the actual percentage of federal spending on roads is very small. In our system of layered government, each unit collects taxes and looks out for the interests of its constituents, but in many cases taxation occurs at a higher level and funds are transfered to a lower level. In my state, federal funding represents about 35-40 percent of total funding for the state DOT. The state is responsible for highways and interstate highway maintenence. The county is responsible for county roads. The city is responsible for city roads. The base assumption is that Federal level funding is the minimum necessary to ensure that interstate commerce is encouraged, state funding is the minimum necessary to ensure intrastate commerce is encouraged, and so on down the line. There are many competing interests in road-building, but to cast it as a simple federal vs. local issue is overly simplistic.

Teachers: Again we have a system where each level of government taxes and spends at a level appropriate to its interests. The federal and state percentages of this pie are large, and local small because it is not very much in the interests of small localities to invest in people who will probably move away. A lot of people take advantage of that efficient transportation system to relocate, and that’s a great thing.

Well, don’t sue the shit out of them. That would take too long because they are entirely full of shit. Maybe sue them into bankruptcy or at least have as a term of settlement that the guilty parties are fired with no hope of future employment from ABC or its subsidiaries. I understand pMSNBC is looking for people who aren’t bothered by the truth or lack thereof. Look at Ed Schultz.

A point that everyone tends to overlook is that both Obama and Warren’s position is fundamentally weak beyond the obvious fact that government’s create infrastructure using tax revenue, much, if not the majority, of which is collected from private businesses and business owners.

The fundamental weakness in these two politician’s position is predicated upon the fact that, as per numerous agencies in the Federal government, 85 – 90% of the critical infrastructure/key resources, or CI/KR, is owned and operated by private companies, NOT the government.

The design, development and maintenance of the infrastructures and resources (power generation and transmission, telecommunications and data communications, petroleum refining and distribution, water purification and distribution, food growth and distribution,etc.)is paid for with capital from those companies that own and operate it as well as private equity and venture capital firms. Just 10 -15% of the critical infrastructure is owned and operated by government; included in this percentage are government facilities and monuments.

The ONLY way those investments in privately held infrastructure pay off is if access to the infrastructure is expanded across the broadest cross-section of the population. Typically, this is achieved by reducing the cost of access, and is NEVER accomplished by limiting access.

I would like to suggest that all liberal business men and women begin sending more of their profit to the government along with all liberal millionnaires and billionnaires. Oh, I forgot. When offered the opportunity to give more money to the Feds, every millionnaire polled (including Buffet) refused to fill out the paperwork. They were not talking about themselves – they have CPAs who faithfully search out every deduction in order to lower their taxes. Buffet has been fighting paying his taxes for years. If our MSM faithfully researched and reported on these hypocrites, we would not have this discussion.

You don’t cure a drug addict by giving him more drugs, do you? How do you expect to cure a power addict by giving him more money? I heard somewhere that money is power and these “progressives” surely believe in THAT saying, now don’t they?

It’s even simpler than this, though: the bridges and roads etc. that Obama or Warren, that other shining example of tribal obfuscation, are talking about are paid for by tax money, read: OUR money!! And for doing so we get abuse where we might expect a reasonable return.

I’m pessimistic, however; this politicizer’s dream will never be resolved as it’s a chicken-and-egg situation, but I’m sure tired of being plucked all the time.

Outstanding does not go far enough to explain and clarify the insiudious,
misguided remarks of Obama and Elizabeth Warren.
What in the world is America doing by allowing these Marxists to attempt
the takeover of this once great nation?
Good luck, America.

Im so GLAD the Pilgrims had all those roads and bridges and parks and whatnot when they got here to “create” the United States of America so they could abuse foreigners and steal stuff from everyone else. And thank GOODNESS Lewis and Clark had GPS when they set out to steal from Pocahontas. What in the world would all those settlers have DONE without the police and fire protection while they were zipping along on their roads and bridges and railways to the West Coast so they could set up movie theaters and protest in the Haight? And those colleges where the government educates all the dopes who show up and pay money to be indoctrinated? Harvard – started by those government “Puritans”, Stanford, started by that famous government “businessman tycoon”, and Yale, started by the government “clergy” in the 1700s. Yep, you’re right, obama. We didn’t build ANYTHING in this country without government. No business, no company, no invention, no schools – nothing at all.

I can not stand Obama, but perhaps he meant the business owners did not build the roads and so implied, without the roads they could not have built their businesses? We do not need to stretch his words, as it is already quite clear Obama does not stand for traditional American values. What really has me surprised, is now there’s now proof that the released Obama Certificate of Birth is a fraud! This is no longer a theory, but a fact as demonstrated by Sheriff Arpaio last week! Yet, none will touch this. Not even FOX! The man is not qualified to be our President- what is going on here??!! All Obama would have to do is OK the release of the micro film supposedly in Hawaii, showing his released Birth Certificate is genuine. Then this would end. But Obama won’t, because he knows his Birth Certificate is a fraud. I call for the Impeachment of Obama!

If B.O. REALLY wanted to go after businesses who don’t pay enough taxes, he has a killing field available in the tax evasion committed in the 7 MILLION+ non-farm jobs now held by illegal aliens. These scofflaw employers AND workers typically dodge payroll, Workman’s Comp, and other taxes to lower the corrupt company’s overhead and help them depress wages. Law abiding Americans needing at least a living wage then look elsewhere, hence, the perfect storm for the “jobs Americans won’t do” myth.
Regardless of its impact on society, our tax funded infrastructures, or the unemployed American citizen, Obama is on a mission to bring in and secure as many “undocumented Democrats” as he possibly can.
The DNC and party operatives are currently working against passed and pending voter ID laws while others are prepping their voter/election fraud machinery.
Illegal alien amnesty is also corporate and union cronyism with payoffs that create layoffs and inflate the Democrat voting bloc.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK7K0itgQt0

In 1978, I established a professional photography business that lasted 35 years. Indeed, I traveled on roads and across bridges to conduct business, but these infrastructures were primarily financed locally and via taxes paid by business owners and the public. Other than that, I can think of no way that the federal government assisted me in any way. In fact, both local and federal government became more and more a hindrance over the years. That business, and others created subsequently, were almost entirely based on personal talent, study and some advice from other business contacts. If necessary, I could still have been successful traveling on horseback – although services might have been a little slower.

I think the deeper argument that Warren in particular was making was that the power, might and presence of the United States allows business to flourish here in an environment of domestic tranquility and the rule of law. As opposed to, say, Somalia, as a counter-example. Our military keeps foreign foes at bay — so far at bay, that not since 1812 has anyone even seriously pondered invading us. Furthermore, domestic insurgencies are generally kept to a minimum (with the obvious exception of the Civil War). No foreign ideologies or systems have threatened the American system on our soil in a long time.

So in this sense the federal government “assisted you,” Warren argues, by protecting the very system in which you operate.

But the ironic part is that the left wing which Warren represents has been bashing and insulting and undermining the military for a hundred years — the very military which she now implies is the “public good” which we should all chip in to fund, as it is the physical presence which makes America a peaceful and reliable place to do business.

So yeah, Elizabeth and Barack, I agree: Let’s keep defense spending healthy, and cut all those other programs which do nothing to ensure a tranquil home environment.

What drives me crazy is giving all “the rest of us” the credit for building the roads and educating etc….the truth is we too are the “rest of us” and our factory’s and small businesses continue to pay the taxes to keep the roads and education etc, working.

In a higher phase of communist society… only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Karl Marx

“You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this …” except when the government does this as in the Gibson Guitar property seizures; and armed SWAT team tactic over imported wood that had been approved by the country of source.

“But the highway system is by now already in place. And the cost of maintaining it and building whatever new highways are needed is a tiny fraction of our federal budget, far less than even 1%. And the business owners who benefit from roads are already paying more than enough taxes to cover their cost.”

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t the fuel tax supposed to be paying for the highways/roads anyway? Making them more of a “fee” than a tax, but non the less, paying for the transportation infrastructure. In this way, those who use the roads 9for whatever reasons) already pay more than those who do not.

Just as an FYI: There’s lots of misinformation here about the origin of what we currently know as the Internet. As a single example, there is (and was) no such thing as “DARPANet.” ARPA/DARPA’s version of the network is, and has always been, “ARPANet.” The original goal of the work that ARPA funded was actually for the purpose of reducing cost — not surviving a nuclear attack. ARPA was funding researchers around the country in a variety of areas; each researcher needed (or at least wanted) a computer on which to do his research. Computers were expensive back then, which meant that buying everybody a computer was not a tenable solution. ARPA’s idea was to have researchers share time on a smaller number of networked computers, where researchers could access one or more computers from their own [remote] sites. And so ARPANet was born, out of a desire to be parsimonious in its funding of researchers around the country. And the network within DARPA that persists today is still called “ARPANet.” There is no DARPANet. HTH.

I’d touch on some of the other areas of misinformation, but they are myriad — dates, roles, purposes. The bottom line, though, is that there are areas in which government investment can help move technology forward in ways that private or industry investment alone cannot. What’s important is for government to recognize that its role is to lay the groundwork — and then get the hell out of the way. ARPANet was a terrific instantiation of a network that connected together a bunch of sites involved in defense work — but DARPA has neither the mission nor the interest to build a commercial network. Would the Internet, more or less as we know it today, have eventually been built without government investment? Almost certainly. But it likely would not have happened as quickly as it did. In fact, even as the commercial Internet formed and grew, early attempts at transitioning it from government management (and investment) to an industry-managed arrangement faltered; the domain name registry, which was initially subsidized by NSF, is a terrific example. Nevertheless, it was eventually transitioned out of the government. The government should serve as a venture capitalist, funding very early development. And, like a venture capitalist, it should want to execute a transition just as soon as the baby is ready. The only difference between the two is that the VC seeks to make money on the transition, whereas the government typically does not — nor should it.

A thoughtful and informed analysis, but could this be a little too much over-think? I think the simplest message by far,
is that all these other people who supposedly help you become successful, are in some way, entitled to share in your success, or in others words, entitled to a share of your money. This is collectivism at work. Never mind that collectivism has been failing, as an economic model, since before Christ, but you would think by now, people would stop trying to make it work. Actually, it does work, but only for a short time, and only for the select few, and then it crashes under the weight of its own corruption. The collectivism Obama embraces, is only designed to enrich and empower the 1% or less. For the other 99.5%, social equality is measured in the misery and poverty that collectivism spreads around.

In ABSENTIA, Over the Past Hundred Years or So
The singular Declaration of an Imperious Government

When in the Course of historic revisionism it becomes necessary for one government to dissolve the political bands which have connected it with a legitimate constitution and to assume among the powers of the earth, the distinct and superior station to which the Laws of Ideology and of Mother Earth entitle it, a casual disregard to the opinions of mankind suggests that it should declare the causes which impels it to the usurpation.

We hold these truths to be … well, duh! … that all LGBT-persons/women/and some men have evolved equal, that they are assigned by their Government with certain revocable Rights, that among these are Raw Existence, Mean Servitude and the pursuit of Government Provided Largesse. — That to provide these rights, Governments are forced upon LGBT-persons/women/and some Men, deriving their random powers from the ignorance of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Society dares question these ends, it is the Right of the Government to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to it shall seem most likely to effect its Dominance and Supremacy. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are born to suffer, while evils are meted out, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of sovereignty and free-thinking, pursuing invariably the same tiresome Object evinces a design to reduce Government under absolute Liberty, it is its right, it is its duty, to throw off such Nonsense, and to provide new Guards for its future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of this Government; and such is now the necessity which constrains it to alter its former System of a Constitutional Federal Republic. The history of the present Subjects of the Unified Socialist Alliance is a history of repeated disobedience and intransigence, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Freedom over this Alliance. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to an apathetic world.

Fantastic article, very thought provoking and on target. A point I find interesting is that our current deficit, created by GOVERNMENT and not TAXPAYERS no matter how much money they earn or have accumulated is so large that it would require every dollar of every transaction done in the private sector to pay it off. This point alone should make it clear that taxpayers are better stewards of their money…not politicians. Disposable income is freedom and if you have that you have the ability (power) if you will to make your own choices and Obama and the Communist Progressives know this that is why they do not want anyone to have any of either; disposable income or freedom.

Thank you thank you thank you for this well-reasoned and thoughtful essay. It’s good to have this sort of thing on hand when people ask why I’m not going to vote for Obama. Yet as soon as I start to reply with facts, I am labeled and dismissed as tea-something, or conspiracy-something, or even race-something. That’s OK, since they brought it up in the first place.

I would be happy to have no president… I would also be happy to have a president who followed the supreme law of the land, AND THE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR HIM WOULD AGREE TO DO THE SAME.

We have such a deal for you! We will tax you, so we can make government bigger, so we have an excuse to tax you some more (ad nausium) and if you balk at the burden of government on your shoulders, we’ll call you racist and tax you some more! And because you will not pay your fair share of our burden, we’ll inflate the fiat currency to strip all Americans of the value of all they have and point at your when they complain.

I agree with this article, but I do have one problem with it. You state in the portion about the second leg of the stool that
“the top 1% of all taxpayers — the wealthy elite businesspeople who benefit from roads and schools and firefighters — pay about 37% of all federal taxes, far more than enough to cover the essentials, plus interest on the debt and plenty of extras besides.”
The important qualifier that you are missing here is that the top 1% of income earners pay 37% of income taxes, not all taxes. Income taxes make up only 41% of all taxes taken in by the government. Additionally, 49% of taxes come from payroll taxes and corporate taxes, which will also skew towards the wealthy. However, I don’t think (although I couldn’t find data on this) that these other taxes are paid so disproportionaly by the rich that they would reach 37% of all tax revenue. That said, the basic overall point still stands, even if the numbers are not quite as jarring.

I barely got past Clonk without tears streaming down my cheeks I was laughing so hard and then you had to throw in…”The stool is now in pieces on the floor. But I just can’t stop kicking”. Now that is funny!! Gosh this was such a thoughtful and impactful piece (with data to support your assertions), I sure hope those boys and girls over at the Romney camp are paying attention. Up to know it seems as though they are MIA. Even so, if we can’t win this one with the pelthora of FACTS we have at our disposal, then Team Elephant sucks.

Good take-down. One other fallacy in these speeches. If you live in a modern subdivision and are the original homeowner on a new home, most likely you paid for those roads, bridges, and infrastructure in your subdivision. Municipalities force developers to pay for all of the streets, utilities, and other infrastructure. Guess what that really means? Yep, those costs are built into the home prices.

In many cases, the same thing is true of businesses in industrial areas being assessed for road and bridge improvements, or again, the developer building that infrastructure and passing on the cost in the building prices.

Let’s go through the agencies you glibly dismissed as unnecessary in the context of providing the means for businesses to succeed and see if they actually might have something to do with a properly functioning infrastructure that is necessary for private enterprise to thrive:

—

Department of State: Yes, diplomacy, spying, and customs and immigration enforcement are necessary to keep our shores and homeland safe, and provide a stable environment where people can invest.

Health and Human Services: Perhaps you’ve heard of the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health? I think it would be harder to have a successful business and investment climate with Malaria and Tuebercluosis running rampant, as they used to. Not to mention NIH funded research is the ultimate basis of most health care startups.

Department of Energy: Actually funds a lot of America’s cutting edge physics research (such as particle physics and astrophysics) and is a huge catalyst for innovation and startups. A large number of firms owe their profitablity to this.

NASA: Ditto

Department of Commerce: Runs the FAA, fisheries service, and other agencies that are crucial to the functioning of several economic sectors.

Department of Treasury: Can’t do any of the above without this.

Department of the Interior: Manages National Parks and Monuments. Perhaps not crucial for most businesses, but crucial for many involved in Tourism and so forth.

Corps of Engineers: Provides a lot of infrastructure (electricity, flood control, etc) that our economy relies on. This one should be obvious.

—

I could go on but you get the point. You have done a selective and misleading parsing of the services that the government provides. Most government programs benefit the public, and yes, businesses, in some way. We can have a debate about whether the cost is worth it on a case by case basis, but to simply summarily dismiss most of them them as without merit or relevance to Obama’s point is simply dishonest.

Sigh. As I’ve said repeatedly to previous commenters, you are criticizing Obama’s list, not mine.

If you want Obama to make a case for the departments you list above, then send him an email and get him to mention them in his next speech.

But the arguments you are making are your arguments — they are not Obama’s arguments.

This essay addresses the claims the Obama and Warren made. It does not address all the big-government arguments that could be made by Obama’s apologists such as yourself.

But to play along with you, to be polite:

The Department of State is schizophrenic, pro-Arab, and just as often undermines sane foreign policy as promotes it. I’d say that was a wash.

The CDC and NIH constitute a tiny percentage of the overall Health and Human Services budget. But let’s be hugely generous and assign another half a percent of the overall US budget for the prevention of epidemics.

The entire all-inclusive budgets of The Department of Energy, NASA, the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of the Interior, and the Corps of Engineers combined is under 5% of the overall budget; and at least half of that funding does not go to the kind of research and infrastructure you reference — most of it goes to bureaucracy and overhead. But again we’ll be generous and grant you another 2.5% of the overall budget to encompass the entirety of every single thing you mention.

.5% + 2.5% = 3% more than my off-the-cuff estimate, including every single one of your “necessary” departments.

23.4% (my original total) + 3% = 26.4%.

That’s hardly different at all from my rounded-up 25%. Nothing has changed. My argument still stands unaffected.

So you once again proved my point. Even if we lumped in every imaginable fantasy and debatable “necessary” government department, we’re still hovering around one-fourth of the overall federal expenditures. And that, let it be noted, includes the entire defense budget, which accounts for most of it.

I said in my comment that my critique was not limited to the departments I mentioned. Almost every Federal program has some bearing on the ability of some sector of the economy to thrive.

As I said, for any program we could debate whether the services delivered are worth the cost, but almost none can be dismissed as completely unnecessary to some private enterprises’ success somewhere.

Yes, even Social Security and Medicare. They allow Seniors to not be destitute and therefore consume goods and services, and of course health care. Would you want to be the CEO of Old Country Buffet if those Social Security checks stopped coming? How about the CEO of Quest Diagnostics if Medicare payments stopped? Didn’t think so.

Add those in and we’re getting close to 100% of the federal budget.

Anyway, my brief foray into seeing if the right wing blogosphere was any more logical and less rabidly ideological than the left is probably over. It’s just echo chambers everywhere, it seems.

Excellent. Another point to consider: If Obama insists that the successful didn’t get there on their own, that government was the cause, then what is his reply to the “99%” who feel they aren’t successful? Isn’t government then necessarily the cause of that as well? Claiming cause is a big responsibility. If those roads and police were the cause of success, then why didn’t they cause success for everyone?

Excellent, concise analysis based upon irrefutable facts and logic! And all done in an even handed, non-inflammatory manner which is something rabid liberals fail at doing and apparently are proud of said failing.

The simple fact that the government is funded by “TAX PAYING CITIZENS” is lost on thr radsical, liberal, progressive politicians who love spending “OTHER PEOPLES MONEY”. Today our Federal Government administers the “ENTITLEMENTS” or “DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH” from “TAX PAYERS”. What used to be called a safety net is now the basis for survival for an increasingly large segment of the population.
Note I did not say “CITIZENS” because we now fund a large number of non citizens under “DREAMER POLICY INITIATIVES” contrary to our “IMMIGRATION AND LABOR LAWS”. Even more troubling , we don’t cover the cost of government! We borrow 1/2 of what we spend each year. Our kids and grand kids will never be able to achieve the “AMERICAN DREAM” IF WE DO NOT RETURN TO A “CONSTITUTIONALLY lIMITED GOVERNMENT” paid for with a balanced budget that starts reducing the debt to China and removes the ability of illegal freeloaders ( citizens and non citizens ) to benefit from the many many goverment funded programs.

“fizzkes” is a wonderful example of why liberals, progressives or what ever label you assign this brainwashed (by our educational department)group of Americans. And I use the term loosely and reluctantly, of why no matter what truths, examples, wisdom or even facts known and acknowledged…will not be accepted, acknowledged or believed at all.

But it is American’s fault that this is so. We have allowed our education system to be slowly highjacked, stolen, corrupted and used against America and freedom for the last several decades. OUR FAULT. Why, you ask? because we stepped back from the maintenance and ultimate responsibility that we all were assigned by our Founders and their vision of America.

WE should all be ashamed of our parents, grand parents and of course ourselves.
But….maybe now that we see and feel how our Republic is trembling and teetering on the brink of her destruction, we will awake and stand up and step forward to the line and defend her and wipe out her enemies within.

God Bless America and give us the numbers and strength to win.

Papa Ray

“The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.”
2009 Judge Alex Kozinski

Very well written. It’s bothersome that over 56% of the budget goes into welfare and other similar social programs. It amazes me that the American population has become so dependent on the government for their livelihood. It’s just crazy.

I say that ALL citizens have access and can use the “government programs” to be successful and that is a constant for all.
The ONLY difference is the hard work and risk taken by some people. Therefore, Obama’s statement is entirely false.
Some people succeed and some do not. It is the individual who makes the difference.